Slate Money: Movies: Sense and Sensibility

Summary

Slate Money: Movies: Sense and Sensibility

Podcast: Slate Money
Episode Title: Sense and Sensibility (Slate Money Goes to the Movies)
Date: August 10, 2021
Host: Felix Salmon, with Emily Peck and guest Taffy Brodesser-Akner

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Episode Overview

This episode of Slate Money Goes to the Movies features a deep dive into Ang Lee's acclaimed adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, with an unusual pairing: the 2002 romcom Maid in Manhattan. Hosts Felix Salmon and Emily Peck are joined by Taffy Brodesser-Akner to discuss both films, focusing on their themes of class, money, gender, and the enduring narrative device of "marrying up." The group debates the ways both films portray women’s agency (or lack thereof), social climbing, and the economic realities that underpin romantic stories across centuries.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Why Pair Sense and Sensibility and Maid in Manhattan?

[Timestamps 01:51–04:47]

• Thematic Connection:
  • Taffy pairs the films to explore the idea of "marrying up" and how stories about women seeking economic security through relationships remain unchanged between 18th-century England and early 2000s New York.
  • Sense and Sensibility is seen as a "good" movie, Maid in Manhattan as a "bad" movie, but both show women navigating systems where romance and financial advancement are entwined.
• Quote:
  • Taffy Brodesser-Akner [04:02]:
    “The theme is marrying up. The theme is trying to maintain your dignity as you find a strata in the world that you aspire to.”
• Felix's Skepticism:
  • Felix is initially incredulous at the comparison, finding Maid in Manhattan "the worst movie [he has] ever seen" [02:09].

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2. Class, Money, and Gender Across Both Movies

[Timestamps 05:37–11:20]

• Shared Narrative Structure:
  • Both films focus on impoverished or less wealthy women seeking to maintain dignity while climbing the social ladder, culminating in “marrying up” as a "righteous" path—not gold-digging, but a noble, love-justified leap into a new class.
  • Sense and Sensibility showcases the Dashwood women, rendered powerless by inheritance laws, left with only marriage as a viable future. Maid in Manhattan presents J.Lo's character as a hardworking single mom in a rigid hospitality hierarchy, striving for advancement but ultimately relying on romance for escape.
• Quote:
  • Emily Peck [07:51]:
    “It’s a movie about class as much as it is about, like, money, circumstances... The only option they have is this weird tightrope where they have to fall into noble love. Only noble love. They can’t be gold diggers, because that’s bad.”
  • Taffy [07:37]:
    “Those women were just as impoverished as J.Lo is in the Bronx... because of the way their society is set up. In Sense and Sensibility, those women are rejected because they have no dowry and they’re too rich to drop to the next level.”

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3. The Illusion and Reality of Social Mobility

[Timestamps 10:58–13:42]

• Plausibility Gaps:
  • The hosts question the believability of Maid in Manhattan: Is J.Lo truly invisible or powerless? Does her job actually restrict her life as much as the Dashwoods’ class status does?
  • Sense and Sensibility is praised for "clear" parameters—viewers instinctively understand the stakes due to well-established period conventions.

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4. Marriage, Money, and "Noble Love”

[Timestamps 13:42–20:46]

• Dirty Money, Pure Love:
  • Felix notes a common Hollywood theme: “money is dirty, but love with a rich person is only pure if it is truly noble love.”
  • Taffy argues that these narratives deliver a specific message, especially to women, about the “forgivable” paths to economic advancement.
• Quote:
  • Taffy [15:11]:
    “Making money by falling in love with a rich man is not dirty, but you have to do it in the right, noble way. And if you marry a rich man without being nobly in love with him, then that’s very bad.”
• Emma Thompson’s Adaptation Choices:
  • Discussion about how the adapted screenplay modernizes Sense and Sensibility with "20th-century lines," like, "We can’t even earn ours," which wouldn't have been uttered in the 1790s but makes the women's predicament legible to modern audiences.

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5. Inherited Wealth vs. Self-Made Success

[Timestamps 19:25–22:30]

• Lack of Meritocracy:
  • All “winning men” in both movies (Hugh Grant, Alan Rickman, Ralph Fiennes) are wealthy by inheritance rather than by work—highlighting structural class barriers and the futility of bootstrapping.
• Women’s Ages & Hollywood:
  • Emily notes the vexing topic of ageism: Emma Thompson was criticized for being "too old" for Hugh Grant’s character (she was only one year older).

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6. Modern Feminism, Work, and Compound Inequality

[Timestamps 22:33–25:59]

• Parallels to Today:
  • Taffy expresses a new, middle-aged perspective: Watching her peers’ advantage through inherited wealth and down payments, she now better appreciates the grim realities expressed in these films about how hard it is to “catch up” without family money.
  • Reference to Thomas Piketty’s work on wealth inequality.
• Quote:
  • Taffy [24:57]:
    “Part of the disappearing middle class was... the message that you can get ahead by working and that even when you do get ahead, you won’t land at the ‘ahead’, only to find that everybody else is so far ahead of you.”

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7. Romantic Fantasy, Power, and Gender in Society

[Timestamps 25:59–34:00]

• Marriage as Social Mobility:
  • The movies propagate the idea that marriage is an effective, if not the only, means for women to change their social standing.
• Women’s Agency or Lack Thereof:
  • In both films, female protagonists are expected to wait passively for men to pursue and choose them, limiting their agency and reinforcing patriarchal norms.
  • Emily calls both movies "horror movies" for their depiction of women’s lack of options.
  • Taffy observes how these stories were internalized by generations of women, including her own immigrant mother, who believed marrying well was a woman’s best chance.
• Quote:
  • Emily [27:14]:
    “Honestly, to me, [Sense and Sensibility] was a horror movie... They had absolutely no power. Completely washed up. Their only option is to find men to marry. But if they seem just anywhere on the edge of desperate about it... they will be shamed and thrown out of good society, like, forever. Total fucking horror movie.”
  • Taffy [34:36]:
    “She [my mother] could not see how working could ever be fair to a woman. And she’s right... we talk about this all the time, and through a pandemic where women gave up their careers or lost their jobs at a disproportionate rate to men.”

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8. The “Bad Women”: Gold Diggers and Socialites

[Timestamps 35:22–39:32]

• Villainous Women:
  • In both films, the “bad” female characters are those who “try too hard” to marry up—Natasha Richardson’s socialite in Maid in Manhattan, and the manipulative sister-in-law in Sense and Sensibility.
  • Taffy points out these are women who actively scheme for wealth, as opposed to the heroines who supposedly “back into it” by accident, which films frame as virtuous.
  • Quote:
    • Taffy [39:18]:
      “The only way to marry money and not be a villain is to back into it, to resist it, and to eventually find it. Because these movies are ultimately, they may be written by women, they’re made by men, and they’re greenlit by men.”
• Passivity as Virtue:
  • The idea persists in pop culture, as highlighted by modern shows like Bridgerton.

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9. Genre and Tone

[Timestamps 33:53–34:36]

• Are These Rom-Coms?
  • The hosts debate whether Sense and Sensibility and Maid in Manhattan qualify as romantic comedies. Taffy argues that “comedy” here is Shakespearean—meaning a marriage at the end, regardless of actual jokes or levity.

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10. Hollywood Adaptation and Patriarchy

[Timestamps 30:18–32:04]

• Emma Thompson’s “Sugarcoating”:
  • Emily suggests Sense and Sensibility hides its horror beneath Hollywood gloss—unlike recent films (e.g. Frozen) that break with the traditional endgame of marriage.
  • Taffy reframes Maid in Manhattan as a potential horror story if told differently (e.g., the exploitative nature of J.Lo’s employment, scene with sexual harassment by the head of security).

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11. Final Rankings and Reflections

[Timestamps 43:38–47:05]

• The hosts give their grades:
  • Taffy: Admits Made in Manhattan is bad but “culturally relevant”; would rank Ice Storm higher.
  • Emily:
    • “Sense and Sensibility is... a B-minus. I’d rather watch Bridgerton at this point... Maid in Manhattan wasn’t a fun bad movie, just pretty bad.”
  • Felix:
    • “I’m going to be nicer... I think [Sense and Sensibility] does stand up... I’m going to give it an A-minus. For Maid in Manhattan: F. Do not watch it.”
• Notable Quote:
  • Taffy [43:43]:
    “What I always say is, when life shuts one door, it opens a window. So jump.”

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Notable Moments and Quotes (with Timestamps)

• Snobbery Labelled:
  • [03:31] Felix: “My snobbery is showing revolution.”
• Hollywood's Double Standard:
  • [17:34] Emily: “The message that you can marry for money, but you have to also love... seems crafted by the patriarchy, right?”
• On Modern Wealth Inequality:
  • [24:57] Taffy: “The amount of money that has been doubling itself while they quietly live this what appears to be the same life as us... I came out pretty shocked about that stuff.”
• On Women’s Passive Power:
  • [36:30] Taffy: “It’s about women being manipulative. That’s not matriarchal. That’s women using manipulation because they have no power.”
• Emily’s Horror Movie Take:
  • [27:14] “To me, this is all a total, absolute nightmare... and it doesn’t really change.”

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Episode Timeline (Major Segments)

• [00:10]–[04:47] – Introduction of guests and the film pairing, rationale for the comparison
• [04:47]–[13:42] – Class, dignity, and survival strategies in both films
• [13:42]–[22:30] – Love, money, and the myth of the righteous marriage
• [22:30]–[25:59] – Wealth inheritance, the vanishing middle class, and the reality of social mobility
• [25:59]–[34:00] – Gendered power, agency, and the passive heroine archetype
• [34:00]–[39:32] – “Bad women,” gold-digging, and the persistent moral divide
• [39:32]–[47:05] – Modern contextualization, genre debate, final opinions and rankings

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Conclusion

This episode uses the unlikely pairing of Sense and Sensibility and Maid in Manhattan to spark a rich conversation about gender, power, class, and money across time. The hosts and their guest peel back cultural expectations about work, marriage, and economic survival for women, finding surprising connections within pop culture tropes—even as they gleefully deride (Maid in Manhattan) or defend (Sense and Sensibility) the cinematic merits of each film. The discussion is lively, at times caustic, and peppered with dry humor—true to the Slate Money tone.

Transcript

[A]

Hello, nice and welcome to the Sense and Sensibility episode of Slate, Money Goes to the Movies. We have me, Felix Ammon of Axios. We have Emily Peck of Fundrise. But hello, most excitingly, we have Taffy Brodessa Akner of so many different places and affiliations. I don't even know how to introduce you anymore. Taffy, introduce yourself.

[B]

I am a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. I am the writer of Fleischman is in Trouble Coming soonish to a television. I'm a member at Congregation Bethel and.

[A]

You know, an all around fabulous, awesome Slate Money friend of the pod. We do ask people to suggest movies for this show. And you did pull a Taffy and force us to watch two.

[B]

But then you pulled a Felix and called this the Sense and Sensibility Edition.

[A]

This is the Sense and Sensibility Sensibility edition. But, yeah, I have to say, it got hijacked a little by a terrible movie, which we are about to reveal. The other terrible movie that you made us watch. It's in the conjunction with Sense and Sensibility. So we're going to compare a good movie with a bad movie. Coming up on Slate, Money Goes to the Movies.

[C]

Go ahead, apologize to Felix.

[B]

I'm very, very sorry that we had to watch this, but I stand by it. It's my point.

[A]

Okay, so, Taffy, just to be clear, you are not apologizing for making me watch the Ang Lee masterpiece, Sense and Sensibility.

[B]

I am not apologizing for making you watch the Ang Lee masterpiece, Sense and Sensibility. I am apologizing for the inevitability of having to watch Made in Manhattan as its companion.

[C]

And Taffy, why did we have to watch Made in Manhattan?

[A]

Explain this to me, because I do not understand. I do not understand how Made in Manhattan, which I believe I honestly, in my heart of hearts, believe is the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. I do not understand. Come now, how this is in any way connected to Ang Lee's masterpiece, Sense and Sensibility.

[B]

Wait, you don't.

[C]

I have theories.

[B]

You don't see any. You don't see Ben?

[C]

Come on. There's nothing there.

[A]

Okay. I am a bearer of very little brain. Taffy.

[B]

Felix to the Manorborn. The theme is marrying up. The theme is trying to maintain your dignity as you find a strata in the world that you aspire to. Does that. Is it coming together? Oh, I feel like coming together. Well, not for Felix.

[A]

You might need to spell this out for me. But let's try and start with Sense and Sensibility. Because number one it's an actually good movie. And number two, if anyone understood economic relations between men and women, I'm going to say it's more likely to have been Jane Austen and Emma Thompson than like JLO and whoever wrote.

[C]

Wait a second.

[B]

It's. This is just incorrect. I think your snobbery is very.

[A]

My snobbery is showing revolution.

[B]

I don't know. Have you not been on Twitter Twitter long enough to know that like that actually taste is flat. They're the same movie. They are the same movie.

[A]

They are both happy.

[B]

What they are both about women who desperately want to keep their dignity but have no money. They desperately want advancement and shelter and dignity and also to marry somebody very wealthy and get ahead in this crazy society. That's what they are both about. And the point of both of them, other than their disparate quality, is that it doesn't ever change. That it doesn't ever change for women. The nature of poverty doesn't change. It doesn't change. If you are a fatherless child who is living in a 12 bedroom cottage that would go for $3 million in Montclair right now, but is considered none of it matters. It is all about what you feel you can tolerate and about how low you can be and how high you can dream. And in those cases, in both of those cases, we, the American viewing public, and especially the young women of the American viewing public are encouraged a route of love which will be a forgivable way of finding a wealthy husband. And that is a message that was transmitted to me and to us my whole life. Felix, your face is still like you accidentally watched a different movie. Emily, is anything I'm saying resounding in your ears?

[C]

Taffy? Yes. Both movies are about poor women trying to, like you said, marry up, become.

[B]

Solvent by marrying up. Not just like marrying, not gold diggers. Because there are gold diggers in these movies and they are not righteous. They are not considered the righteous ones because they already have some money. It's only when you're really poor that falling in love with a man and then refusing his love on the basis of your dignity allows you to enter into the echelon of wealth where you get to be happy.

[C]

Right.

[A]

So now I'm beginning to. Now I think you've put your, your finger on the, the Venn overlap here is that they both have this, this idea that the righteous woman refuses love on the basis of dignity. That's like a little bit of a subtext. I do not buy. By the way, this idea that our young heroines of Sense and Sensibility are poor not just because they live in a cottage that would cost $3 million in Montclair, but mainly because they are down to their last two servants. There is, like, an actual level of poverty that is just a little bit visible below them. And so it's actually off screen, right, that we hear about the benighted female who we never really, you know, Eliza, I think is her name, who gets impregnated by the dastardly bad man, and then. But she never appears on screen, and then she goes off and has her baby, and it's a terrible outcome. There's a layer below the layer of.

[B]

Righteousness, for sure, but it's not just about poverty. It's about the acceptable and the level of tolerance in the acceptable. Meaning. Those women were just as impoverished as J. Lo is in the Bronx trying to get to the management level at the hotel where she is a maid. And the reason for that is because of the way their society is set up. In Sense and Sensibility, those women are rejected because they have no dowry and they're too rich to drop to the next level. Right.

[C]

It's a movie about class as much as it is about, like, money, circumstances. Yes. These women don't have, as they didn't inherit their father's wealth. It comes down to the problem with. In England back then, the rule was if you died and you passed on your estate, it went to the firstborn son. Everyone else is kind of out of luck. So these women, the plot of Sense and sensibility, these three daughters and the mother, because she's the second wife, get nothing. They get what is 300 pounds a month or a year or 500 pounds a year, a small stipend and a cottage that obviously looks incredible. And they sat. They have to get rid of all their servants, but for only two. So it's really hard for them. Okay. But I mean, the message is really, I think it's like this, like, 90s feminism, where Emma Thompson acknowledges these women are utterly powerless. Like in the beginning, the oldest, played by Emma Thompson, says to her love interest, you will inherit your fortune. We can't even earn ours. Like, they can't inherit money. They're not allowed to make any money because if they went and worked, they would drop out of their class, which confers on them the servants and stuff. So they're in this complete. Like, they're completely powerless, these women. And the only option they have is this weird tightrope where they have to fall into noble love. Only noble love. They can't be gold diggers, because that's bad. Even though what they're doing is the same thing and it's just a matter of judgment and they can't work.

[B]

You talk of feeling idle and useless.

[C]

Imagine how that is compounded when one has no hope and no choice of any occupation whatsoever.

[A]

Our circumstances are therefore precisely the same.

[B]

Except that you will inherit your fortune.

[C]

We cannot even earn ours.

[A]

Perhaps Margaret is right. Right. Piracy is our only option.

[B]

What is swamping exactly?

[C]

And that's where my quibble with the parallel to Made in Manhattan is. Because Made in Manhattan is the early 2000s, and we just don't have enough information about J. Lo's character's circumstances in the Bronx to see that she is at the same level of powerlessness. Like, you have to use all your outside knowledge about the Bronx in the year 2000, while also believing that JLo can be a maid in a hotel in Manhattan and disappear and become invisible. To me, that is the inherent flaw with this movie.

[B]

It is J.

[A]

Lo.

[B]

I think that she probably couldn't clean anything if she tried.

[C]

No, she could clean everything, but she can't be invisible. There's a line like, you are maids in this hotel. No one must notice you. And it's like, yeah, but it's.

[B]

Nothing in that movie makes sense. I mean, like, people enter. Like, she can just come in and start, like, doing up the room as opposed to what actually happens, which is that she waits until you're done or she waits until you're out, or someone calls. Even at the really highest level of staying at a New York hotel, the front desk guy calls housekeeping as soon as the person walks out and says, now go up. None of it makes sense.

[C]

I'm just saying it's not clear to me that J. Lo is so powerless that she needs to marry Ralph Fiennes, who is, like, the blandest piece of.

[A]

Oh, my God, he's so. Yeah, exactly. Ray Fiennes is such a bad, bad love interest. And. Yeah, but, Taffy, to your point, this is all set at the Waldorf Astoria, but they had to change the name of the Waldorf because obviously the Waldorf is like, we would never.

[B]

Our maids would never try on your clothing while you weren't there. I mean, also true, she behaves incredibly unethically. Like, trying on somebody's clothing is not a great thing.

[C]

But it wasn't her clothing. It was going back to the store. So it was a. I think it was a gray area. Taffy, honestly, do you.

[B]

That was a gray Area.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

She shouldn't have worn it out to the park and walked the 20 blocks somehow without sweating or anything damaging. Anything in her white outfit, which was also, I suppose, not realistic, but it is J. Lo. And I can kind of believe she can run 10 miles and still look perfect.

[B]

I believe she wears that to this.

[C]

Day in her white pantsuit. They're six.

[B]

You're six.

[A]

What are you doing?

[C]

What are you doing? Oh, shoes.

[B]

Size nine.

[C]

Perfect. I'm a seven and a half, which.

[B]

Means you're an eight. Just put on some jib socks, you're good to go.

[A]

That's it.

[C]

Put this stuff back.

[B]

What are you doing?

[C]

Not until you try it on. I can't try on her clothes. They're not hers. They're not Dolce.

[B]

Technically, they've been abandoned.

[A]

Oh, let's not let them hear us.

[B]

Who?

[A]

The clothes.

[C]

Marissa Ave Maria Ventura. When are you or I ever gonna.

[B]

Get to try on a $5,000 anything?

[C]

Come on, feel how the other half feels, huh? So I don't remember my point because we're linking Sense and Sensibility by Ang Lee to a movie called Made in Manhattan starring JLo.

[B]

It's too hard.

[C]

I mean, it's.

[B]

I don't understand. I can't believe we're still on. How are these two appearing? We have to get past the pairing.

[A]

Okay, I will come in and rescue Emily from the point that she. Which was basically that the genius of the first scene of Sense and Sensibility and the fact that it's so clearly set in sort of costume drama ville of late 18th century England is that we totally understand the sort of broad mores of the society that we're looking at. As Emily says, Emma Thompson hammers this home with this very kind of. How do you say it? 20th century line about, I can't even make my own living.

[C]

True.

[B]

It's true.

[A]

And, yeah, but it's not like something that anyone would have ever said in 1795. And so we get. It's very clear to us what the parameters of possibility are. And in Made in Manhattan, by contrast, we're always kind of wondering to ourselves, like, why is this incredibly sort of beautiful and accomplished and intelligent woman were, A, working as maid in the first place and B, like, being so reluctant to rise up through management and all the rest of it, why can't she be Natasha Richardson in a successful magazine editor? Like, so anyway. But I really don't want to talk about Made in Manhattan because it's a terrible movie. And there is a more interesting question here. Which is like the basic kind of capitalist reading of Sense and sensibility and taffy. You did us all the incredible favor in season one of this series explaining the fact that you can see every Hollywood movie basically through this lens of money is dirty. And the pure thing is to abjure it. And then you. You've also just really picked out this. This sort of corollary to that, which is that making money by falling in love with a rich man is not dirty, but you have to do it in the sort of right noble way. And if you marry a rich man without being nobly in love with him, then that's very bad.

[B]

It is very bad. And I would caution you that during the first season, what did we watch? We watched Indecent Proposal. I would like to know if the panel here is suggesting that Indecent Proposal is a better movie than Made in Manhattan. You know, I have a degree in film and television. This is not about, like the cinema. This is about the messages. This is about how we got here in all of influencer culture. Right now I see Made in Manhattan as like a kind of jumping off point of what if you could try on the clothing and what if you could pretend to be the person? And I think that's where a lot of this started. Made in Manhattan was a successful movie. It is a movie that is still broadcast in dry bars across this country. So that as you get your hair blown out, you are being forced to watch it. And if we're talking about Emily, that face is of someone with straight hair privilege. And I will not. I mean, season three, we'll get to straight hair privilege in season three.

[C]

All right.

[B]

But I would like to talk about, like, Made in Manhattan is not as skilled a movie, but its first scene is a woman who is trying to get her son to the next level. She's quizzing him on is it presidents or I can't remember.

[C]

She son is obsessed with the seventies for some reason.

[B]

Right, Right. So she's quizzing him on that. And they're in this incredible rush because poor people in this movie are always in a rush.

[C]

Just hustling.

[B]

Yeah. And she has to get there, and she has to get there. And whether or not you believe that she could be an invisible maid, she is a maid and she's very ambitious. Time and time she's told the same thing that the sisters are. The Dashwood sisters are told in Sense and Sensibility, which is, this is not for you. You don't get to have this because this is how you were born. And that, to me, is the landing point of all of it. These movies, I saw them in the same theater. These were the messages that were transmitted to young girls who are watching these movies or who were reading books in prior centuries.

[C]

I have so many thoughts. The first thought is the message that you can marry for money, but you have to also. Love is a message that seems crafted by the patriarchy, Right? Like a bunch of old ugly men were like, they know that that's the only way they're gonna get a pretty young girl, but they must be loved.

[B]

They're like, you better love us if you're gonna marry us for our money. Exactly.

[C]

And then the second thing is, what's interesting to me about Sense and Sensibility, this movie versus the book is in the book, the love interests of the sisters kind of suck. Like, they're not great, they're kind of weaselly. Hugh Grant's character is made much more charming. And I mean, he's Hugh Grant, so it's not a big leap, but he's made extremely charming. They give him that scene with the daughter early on to show, like, how great he is and how in touch with the children, and he's just so great. But in the book, Austen is not sugarcoating it. She's like, look, you know, like, these ladies gotta marry for some money. And that's the whole point. But in the movie Sense and Sensibility and in Maida Manhattan, you have to believe in the fairy tale that love and the money thing go together. When we see all the time in real life, we see, like, these people marry Rupert Murdoch or Mick Jagger, like.

[B]

Erika Jewelry and Tom Girardi.

[C]

These aren't love matches, but it's a fantasy that Hollywood really likes.

[A]

So I need to ask you, what.

[B]

If you did fall in love with the rich man? Like, what would be so bad? What is more Democratic, what is a win win than a maid falling in love with a Republican candidate for Senate? What is more romantic than that? Through the eyes of a certain desperate person who thinks that poverty would be worse than a loveless marriage, which I bet a lot of people think until they're in a loveless marriage.

[A]

One thing which Ralph Fiennes has in common with Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility is that they have basically inherited wealth. No one in any of these movies really work for a living. Like, insofar as Ralph Fiennes is rich, it's not because he's made lots of money being a politician. It's because he's the son and the grandson of senators in before him. And similarly with the Austin milieu, you have when you come from the right kind of family and you've inherited the right kind of privilege. Yeah, like, maybe you find a job as a lawyer or something. But really the money comes from money, and it's all inherited. And that's definitely part of it. You get that kind of thing where money gets passed down from father to son and the women have to marry into it. And Austin creates a sense of sort of urgency by denying the women their dowry at the beginning, which was the way that things kind of equalized a tiny bit at the time. Emma Thompson, at the same time, who, by the way, if it wasn't clear, was the woman who wrote this movie. She also makes the women much more age appropriate in the book. They're like, what are they, like 14 and 16 or something like that. And that was just.

[B]

I mean, how old was she when she shot this spread between her and her youngest sister? I have a sister.

[C]

I looked it all up.

[B]

Younger than I am. And we don't look that okay.

[C]

Emma Thompson was 36, Kate Winslet, 20. And the younger sister, obviously much younger. And Hugh Grant was 35. Okay, so I said, Emma Thompson, 36, Hugh Grant, 35. Emma Thompson, interviewed years later, said she had people coming to her and saying she was too old for Hugh Grant. She was one year older. That's just a fun fact I'm inserting here because the age situations in these films are upsetting.

[B]

And she would end up married to Alan Rickman, in love, actually, and that felt appropriate.

[C]

But Alan Rickman and Kate Winslet in this film, not appropriate. 30 year difference.

[B]

Which is why it's, like, not shocking when she's like, oh, I'll go with the hot guy who, like, carries me places, obviously.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And then Alan Rickman can barely carry her towards the end. Also, why are people get sick from the rain? I do not understand.

[B]

I know.

[C]

Is that real? Does that ever happen?

[B]

I'm so. I mean, I'm haunted by a piece of Anna Karenina where she's pregnant and they decide to go for a walk a few steps into the woods, but then she has to return. I mean, I think about it all the time. I do want to say, say that, like, both movies are extraordinarily astute about the conundrum of the poor woman of the time. J. Lo is in a management. Like, she's going to try. She's for some reason, a reluctant. Like, we hear how ambitious she is, but no way is she Going to. So they're logical fallacies. I mean, the movie makes no sense there, but.

[A]

But it is incredibly astute. Somehow, somewhere else.

[B]

I do want to say that, like, after what I have learned, when I saw it at first, I have a different reaction to it now, and my reaction to it now is a little. It's like a sad, intense reaction of being 45 years old myself and having watched as the people I know who were middle class and who graduated from colleges and who started their careers and who maybe had enough money to do an internship, things like that, I saw those people get married, and I saw their parents give them down payments for their houses, whereas my husband and I didn't get anything like that. And I watched as they took the money they didn't spend on a down payment for a house and invested that money. And I watched as that money compounded itself. And I watched us sort of out at the. At the end, at the point where, like, can we go on this vacation? We can't, but they can. And the amount of money that has been doubling itself while they quietly live this what appears to be the same life as us. I came out, again, a degree in film and television. I came out pretty shocked about that stuff. I came out with an understanding that, I don't know, J. Lo. If he doesn't. If he doesn't make you sick, maybe go for it. Because if you really do want to get ahead for your son, we don't know where his father is or if you had any help from him. I don't know what, like, the very cynical part of me and the reason I wanted to watch this now and with this movie, is that I really do look at circumstances like that now and say, I don't know, maybe the noble thing is not only choosing noble love, but of understanding what you want in life and the fact that it was never fair that there's no management program that will get you a suite at the. What's the name of the Waldorf.

[A]

Yeah, I can't. Or something.

[B]

Yeah, the Beresford. I mean, I know that you guys do a money podcast and you know about the disappearing middle class longer than I do.

[A]

I think it's reappearing.

[B]

Do you? I remember watching the capitalism documentary. What's his name? The French guy.

[C]

Piketty with the big book.

[B]

Yeah. Like the thousand page book.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And it came with a documentary for people like me. And they do this cartoon in it. I mean, they do this cartoon of, like, a guy in French in. Why am I blanking on the Word French aristocracy. Aristocracy. Thank you. How could I not bring the word aristocracy to this podcast today? And they watch as he puts $5 into a SEP IRA while the other person just works. And how over generations, that compounds itself. And I feel like part of the disappearing middle class was not the marriage message from these movies, and especially from Made in Manhattan, but the message that you can get ahead by working and that even when you do get ahead, you won't land at the ahead, only to find that everybody else is so far ahead of you that if you are bidding on the same goods, for example, you never stand a chance.

[A]

So I totally buy this idea that the combination of income plus wealth is much more powerful than income on its own. And that's definitely true. We can argue the case about whether the middle class is disappearing. But I also want to just go back to this idea of like marriage as the way to wealth, because it really is a great way to get wealthy, whether you're a woman or a man. I mean, if you marry someone wealthy, that's like, boom, you're wealthy. That's like. It's a magical alchemy there. So it's, it's a very effective way of getting rich. But one of the things that strikes me about both of these movies is that it's not enough to just legitimately be in love with the rich man. Like, at the same time, your job is to basically sit back and have no agency and wait for the rich man to persuade you that even though you might not be like rich yourself, he really does genuinely want to marry you. And then they go, oh, well, okay then. And I suppose if you insist.

[B]

Right, right.

[C]

I thought Sense and Sensibility, honestly to me was a horror movie. Like these three girls had absolutely no power. They were relegated to the countryside. I know it doesn't seem so bad to us right now, the two servants, but zero power to do anything with their lives. She's 36, they're saying she's an old maid, completely washed up. Their only option is to find men to marry. But if they seem just anywhere on the edge of desperate about it, like the Kate Winslet character, they will be shamed and thrown out of good society, like forever. Total fucking horror movie. Like where all of a sudden, because you're dying, okay, fine, you can marry the 50 year old man. Cause he finally looks appealing to you, so you skate and remain honorable. Like, to me, this is all a total, absolute Nightmare. And for JLo, also, if her only avenue out of poverty is she has to pretend to be in love with this, like, milquetoast lame dude is a Republican but cares about people in the Bronx. I don't even understand. But it's just these. Both of these movies are just, to me, like, all about not really the power of wealth, but the power of men and the powerlessness of women and the little itty bitty tightrope that they were put on even while you had no. They already can inherit any money. But even beyond that, all the morality and the ethical monitoring and all that, it's just. My God, it's like being in a little straight jacket and it. And it doesn't really change.

[B]

They have to be the guests of these people. They're reliant on other people's kindness, which means they have to constantly be polite and they have to constantly be charming. And it's terrible, exhausting.

[C]

You have to constantly be polite and charming and you can't say what's on your mind. Emma Thompson can't talk about her feelings. She has to be sensible.

[A]

And then she has that one scene where she's allowed to, like, allow herself a sob of like, public being upset about something.

[C]

Yeah, it makes me so mad. I really got very upset watching it.

[A]

So here's my question, Emily, which is, I think the genius of Austin is that she really put her finger on that dynamic. And she wrote about that dynamic very unsparingly in some ways. And the interesting thing to me is you get Emma Thompson, who's you know, a very accomplished 1990s career woman writing this movie, this adaptation of the Jane Austen novel, for which, by the way, she won the Oscar best adapted screenplay. And when she does that adaptation, she does that Hollywood sugar coating of it. Right. The horror movie is there, but it's very. You need to kind of go digging for it. And it's not the surface message of the film at all. And the movie become gets played as this, like, romantic period piece. And tell me what you think about the Emma Thompson adaptation. Like, has she just been captured by the patriarchy? What's going on here?

[C]

Well, I think the ending is a patriarchy capture because you would see a decade ish later, Frozen comes out. And neither of the girls in Frozen has to wind up with some dumb prince guy that's like likable. Cause he's good with children. We've moved on. But in 1995.

[B]

Decade, right?

[C]

Yeah, but in 1995, you cannot end a Hollywood movie. Like she had to end it that way. Right. I mean, I don't know if she wanted it to go that way or not. But she had to. She had to make the men more likable.

[B]

It was very in the spirit of Austen to end it that way. I felt like when Austin wrote it that way, those men were tolerable. And now she had, like to adapt something is to make it of the time. Remember that in 1995, we're still five years away from Made in Manhattan. That's what movies were like. They were like quadrant movies where like, all right, I guess this one's for the ladies, right? And it was terrible. I mean, the way Emily says that. This was like a horror movie when I was watching Made in Manhattan. I'm sorry to keep bringing it up. You guys clearly don't want to talk about it. But if someone were to take away the music and turn it into like a dark working girl's. Not working girl, but like a dark movie about a woman just trying to survive, it would hold up as a document also of its time. I mean, they say. I mean, also the moving makes no sense. I wrote down a couple of lines that I thought maybe seeing them in writing would help. When life shuts one door, it opens a window. So jump.

[A]

What?

[B]

What are they inciting her to do?

[C]

A suicide movie?

[A]

Defenestrate yourself, JLo. Defenestration.

[B]

Like, what is he trying to say to her? It's like this in Silence of the Lambsworth, trying to get her to swallow his own tongue.

[A]

Normally you'd have to go through the entire program and then train for a year as a butler. But given the circumstances, rather extraordinary. Due to overbooking and understaffing, we've decided to accelerate your application and move you.

[B]

Directly into management after the six week training.

[A]

With the proviso, of course, that you pass the practical exam and you fulfill each requirement for every station. So you see, Ms. Ventura, sometimes when life shuts one door, it opens a window. So jump.

[B]

If you were to shade this a little darker, if you were to add some music, if you were to darken the lights on it a little, I think you would have documents of the time. That was terrifying.

[C]

You can make that movie in 2021. And the scene where she has to take her kid to work with her, like all weekend long and leave him in the hands of hopefully competent co workers. Very real and very.

[B]

Or how about when the security guard will show her the footage if she kisses him?

[C]

Very creepy.

[B]

That is like a 2017 New York Times story in the making. In the year 2000, I was forced to kiss the head of security in.

[C]

Order to Be canceled.

[B]

Right, Right.

[C]

I mean, I just read a piece in Wired about a man who had to take his son with him a baby, as an Uber driver, and his car was stolen with the baby in. Just as you were saying, this could be a horror movie. I was like, it really could. Like, a lot of bad stuff can happen when you're, like, schlepping your kid to work with you all the time. This is happening all the time in 2021.

[A]

But, Tak, I need to ask you this question. Is like, what genre are these movies? They're not rom coms. But what are they? Because they're not actually funny, either of them.

[B]

Neither of them are funny. But they. But romantic comedies. Give me a time. You laughed in a romantic comedy. It's like a Shakespearean comedy. They get married at the end. That's why it's called a comedy.

[A]

So a comedy is just a tragedy where you get married at the end.

[B]

Yeah. And if you extend it to the divorce or to the death, it becomes a tragedy. If you keep the camera rolling, it all becomes a tragedy. Let's be honest.

[A]

The first two acts are always the same. And then if it's a sad ending, it's a tragedy. And if it's a happy ending, it's a comedy.

[B]

I mean, this is like the Glass Menagerie. I am one of the four daughters, and my mother's real hope for us was that we would just marry wealthy men. She was an immigrant who stayed at home with her children, and she and my father got divorced. And she didn't have a profession. Like, she could not see how working could ever be fair to a woman. And she's right. Right. Like, we talk about this all the time. And through a pandemic where women gave up their careers or lost their jobs at a disproportionate rate to men. Like my mother, who I, like, rolled my eyes at. She was right about this stuff, and I don't blame her. I just also like, having watched her two divorces was like, I don't know if marrying wealthy seems good either. Like, it seems like that could go away.

[A]

Can I ask you about the bad women in these movies? The ones with money. But who are the baddies? So the Natasha Richardson character in Made in Manhattan or the sister in law in Sense and Sensibility who, like, so mean, talks her husband down from 3000 pounds to a pittance.

[B]

1500 pounds, then. What do you say to 1500?

[C]

What brother on earth would do half.

[B]

So much for his rail sisters, let alone half blood?

[C]

Well, they can hardly expect more. There's no knowing what they expect. The question is, what can you afford?

[B]

How to pass here to their mother while she lives.

[A]

Would that be more?

[B]

It is better than parting with the 1500 all at once.

[C]

But if she should live longer than 15 years, she'd be completely taken in. People always live forever when there is an annuity to be paid them.

[A]

Again. One of the things that Austin got right about this culture of landed gentry was that it was surprisingly matriarchal. It lives on even through, like, the PG Wodehouse novels of the indomitable aunts who basically control everything.

[B]

It's about women being manipulative. That's not matriarchal. That's women using manipulation because they have no power.

[C]

She's explained it correctly, okay? Women are powerless, and they have to act in certain ways to have any power. It's a soft kind of power. That's why people are always like, women are so passive aggressive. It's like, because they're not allowed to be aggressive.

[B]

Aggressive, you know, because then we get punched and divorced, then nobody wants to marry us.

[A]

From the point of view of someone like Hugh Grant, he feels like he's at the whims of these women who can shunt him off to London and force him to do whatever he doesn't want to do. And so, yeah, whether they're, like, manipulative, either way, they do wind up having some kind of power, and this is considered to be a bad form of living. And Natasha Richardson, who is, like, a very successful magazine editor and rich and glamorous.

[B]

Is that what she was? She was a magazine editor. I think she was just a fancy lady.

[A]

I thought she was, like, the editor.

[C]

No, she was. She had a job.

[A]

She works for Vogue. She had, like, a swanky job for Vogue, which is why Dolce Gabbana kept on sending her clothes.

[B]

You should Google it. But I think if she had a swanky job for Vogue, it's like one of those west coast editor jobs where it's like, oh, you're just there for your connections. Which is not to say anything disparaging about whoever is the west coast editor at Vogue and probably gave me some work.

[C]

I can't find this on the Internet.

[B]

I mean, I don't think people rewatch this a lot. I think it's just me and now you guys. And I think this was. It's pretty safe. I won't be invited back.

[C]

It says she's a socialite. No, you're coming on next season, too.

[B]

Oh, my. Gosh Sure I will.

[A]

Let's get back to the show. Since the detour for Googling Natasha Redfield.

[B]

She was a socialite. She was a socialite and she has that terrible friend who's Amy Sedaris, which was.

[C]

I love Amy Sedaris.

[B]

But also, did you like I Wrote.

[C]

My notebook Amy Sedaris?

[B]

I mean, I know, but she's. It wasn't a great Amy Sedaris character.

[C]

No, it was like a racist Amy Sedaris saying mean things to J. Lo's character.

[B]

So the women in this. We know about Caroline Lane in Made in Manhattan and we assume about the sister in law and Sense and Sensibility that the sister in law did horrible things to marry a man with money. The same things we can see Natasha Richardson doing. Like she is going to the Met party pre gala. She's going to date him. She's going to set up a lunch with him. She is working hard. And to. To work hard to marry a man with money is the opposite of accidentally finding a man with money while you're trying on somebody else's clothing. The only way to marry money and not be a villain is to back into it, to resist it, and to eventually find it. Because these movies are ultimately, they may be written by women, they're made by men, and they're greenlit by men.

[C]

And can I say that these themes are not gone. I don't know if either of you watched Bridgerton on Netflix, but it is the same story. It's stories about the gold digging women in the 1800s trying to get a husband versus the ones that are more virtuous and virginal. And the main couple in Bridgerton. I don't know. I might just watch. Oh, okay. Well, it's all the same. The main couple, she doesn't. She hates him and he hates her. And he's the most eligible bachelor that season. And every other woman is like scheming to get him. She doesn't even want him. And of course you know what happens. I won't say explicitly to spoil it, but it's the same plot. Nothing has changed. Like we were saying Frozen had a better ending. Cause the girls in Frozen don't wind up with the man. But like, that's pretty atypical. Still, nothing really has changed in the theme that you guys are talking about where there's like the virtuous woman who just stumbles into a rich man's arms and the evil, conniving, scheming, gold digging woman who's laser focused on the rich man's Arms.

[A]

That's. I mean, it's actually worse than the Taming of the Shrew. Right.

[B]

I think Emily and I are giving you the. We don't remember that we don't know.

[A]

Apologies for bringing Shakespeare into this one.

[C]

Oh, no. Felix, say your thoughts.

[B]

Sure, we'll listen.

[A]

Actually, I want to say that Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson made a movie of the Taming of the Shrew where Emma Thompson plays the shrew who gets tamed by Kenneth Branagh. You know, she's like, mean and nasty and hates him, but eventually she falls in love at the end and it has a happy ending.

[C]

You think that's better than the romantic comedy?

[A]

That's a romantic comedy. Exactly. But no, it's all bad. It's all patriarchal. And I think I just want to sort of finish here by asking both of you, like, with hindsight, what do we think of the fact that the only Oscar this movie got was the best adapted screenplay Oscar for Emma Thompson? Like, the thing that we like the most if we're the Academy, it's no Ice Storm being the script.

[B]

That's not how the. We know now. That's not how the Oscars work. The thing about it was Emma Thompson was that when you're looking down a name on a list and you have to vote, everyone's really psyched for Emma Thompson.

[A]

I guess it's the equivalent of giving, like, Matt Damon an Oscar for writing Good Will Hunting. Right. It's just like if you get a script which is written by an actor, wow, that's something else.

[B]

I'm in the Writers Guild of America now, and sometimes I'm asked to vote in things, and I think it's not really fair if I didn't see certain things to vote. But I think it's a common practice to vote for the thing that's familiar. And Emma Thompson in 1995 is a familiar entity to everyone who's voting. I would like to say that if I were to suggest. If I were to dare and suggest a third movie to watch with this, it would be intolerable cruelty, because that is a movie in which the gold digger is maybe the hero.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It is some sort of success to figure out a way to get money and to survive. We're talking about survival here in both of these cases. We're talking about the ability to have a life the way you envision a life should be. Not that they need to live in a mansion, but they need to be able to, like, the women in Sense and Sensibility need to get Married. And by the way, I think that it's Jane Austen aware of that when it's. It's Sense, you know, it's like it's a great hominin. It's just like a pittance. That's all it would take to get them there. And for J. Lo, she just wanted to be in the management training. The rest was gravy. But you know what I always say is when life shuts one door, it opens a window. So jump.

[C]

Deeply, deep wisdom.

[B]

Yeah, brilliant.

[A]

We will wrap up. Taffy, come out and actually tell us if Ice Storm is, I don't know, the top of the ranking, where would you rank Sense and Sensibility? And where would you rank Made in Manhattan?

[B]

Okay so on a list of three or on a list of a. Kabillion.

[A]

On a list of Kabillion.

[B]

Okay, so Ice Storm number one. I mean it's a. We all agree it's a terrible movie, but do not. It was a very popular movie. It has cultural relevance. Ask yourself if you are remember like young me, little 38 year old or 42 year old me watching Succession and thinking it was an aspirational show. We remember that year. Right?

[C]

I remember.

[B]

I'm just saying people grow.

[A]

Have you, have you grown since you watched the first season of Succession?

[B]

Taffy, I'm rewatching the second season and I'm like, what's so bad?

[A]

Emily, what's your final ranking for these two movies?

[C]

I can't. My brain is not wrapped around the billion stack. So Kabillion. The Kabillion stack. I mean Sense and Sensibility is. It's like a B minus. I'd rather watch Bridgerton at this point. I mean it's a good movie. But again I was like, eh, I could be binge watching Succession right now. And then again in preparation of course. Right. Felix and Made in Manhattan. I mean, yeah, Kabilion, whatever. This is a bad movie. It wasn't a fun bad movie. I thought it was just pretty bad. Although I like watching JLo. I think she's amazing and I really. She was poorly cast because she cannot disappear into made dumb ever. She is J. Lo. She has shown us all what it means to be a powerful woman. At 52, making out with Ben Affleck on Instagram over and over for years.

[B]

We are trapped in a years long vortex of this.

[C]

She is our queen. So I mean it's not the worst movie ever.

[B]

But also that was her brand. I just want to say like she was Jenny from the block and now you have the rocks that she got. I mean. Okay, go on. I'm sorry, I don't mean to.

[C]

It's very consistent, the branding.

[B]

It's also very funny just to have the thought while you're watching Sense and Sensibility of thinking of Kate Winslet and thinking of it as a Mare of Easttown prequel. Just close your eyes for a minute. I'm out anyway.

[A]

I don't know if I'm watching.

[B]

How about you?

[A]

I'm going to be nicer about Sense and Sensibility than you guys. I think. I think it does stand up. I think it is problematic for all of the reasons that we have discussed. But it's still. It has a lot of pace to it. It doesn't have longeurs. It has actually like in terms of comic comedic aspects, like the bright yellow race car, which is actually like a horse drawn carriage is hilarious. And there's. There's a bunch of like nice like moments of levity sort of baked into it. Angley keeps it racing along. It has the duerga, you know, wedding, double wedding ending and where he throws the sense.

[C]

Alan Rickman to just send home the sense theme. Throws change when they're coming out of the church.

[B]

Just.

[C]

I needed to mention that.

[A]

So I'm gonna give. I'm gonna give it an A minus for Sense and Sensibility and for Made in Manhattan. I just get f. It's a terrible movie. Do not watch it. Apropos, Taffy. Go watch Intolerable Cruelty as well, which is the most underrated Coen Brothers movie. Go check it out.

[B]

The most.

[A]

That's like.

[B]

And the best. Baby. I don't know.

[A]

It's a really good movie. Taffy. Thank you for coming on. You. You are the only person we always have on every season of Everything because you're the best person.

[B]

You're the best person for asking me and making an old girl feel loved it without having to marry for money. Thank you. I love you both. I love you all.

[A]

And yeah, we'll be back on Saturday with a regular episode of Slate Money.