Orgasm Against The Machine | Sci-Fi, Stripteases, and Sex in “Barbarella”

Get ready for one of the most bizarre and brazen films of a generation.

In this episode, Ariel and Morgan travel back to 1968’s sci-fi cult classic Barbarella — a movie where Jane Fonda strips out of a spacesuit in zero gravity and later defeats a villain using… an orgasm machine.

Yes. Really.

The hosts break down how the film uses erotic spectacle, camp, and absurdity to create scenes that are both wildly objectifying and oddly revolutionary for their time.

They get into it all:

• How the famous zero-gravity striptease opening uses choreography, framing, and floating credits to tease and shock the audience 
• Why the “Excessive Machine” scene was extremely bold for mainstream cinema in 1968
• Fascinating power dynamics where the villain weaponizes pleasure and the hero literally sets the situation on fire.
• Why early Hollywood often treated sex as visual spectacle first and human experience second

It’s campy. It’s chaotic. And somehow still iconic. 

Want to watch along? Our reaction covers the opening striptease (0:00:00) and the excessive machine scene (Time Code: ~1:15:00). We cut around the clips, so it won’t sync perfectly, but you’ll absolutely get the point. 

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CREDITS — Barbarella
Director: Roger Vadim
Writers: Terry Southern; Roger Vadim; Claude Brulé; Vittorio Bonicelli
Source Material: Based on the comic Barbarella by Jean-Claude Forest
Producer: Dino De Laurentiis
Actors: Jane Fonda; Milo O’Shea
© 1968 Dino De Laurentiis Cinematografica / Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hey fakers, Ariel here, and I'm so excited to share with you our new theme song. Thank you, Mike Gets, for creating it for us. We are so excited to have something not written by AI. So we hope you enjoy our intro, outro, and all that in between. Stay real, fakers.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

She blew every fuse. Welcome to the female orgasm. I'm gonna break your fucking machine. And he's like, you should feel shame. She's like, I don't. Sorry, not sorry.

SPEAKER_04 0:43

Hi, I'm Arielle Lee Cohen. Hey, I'm Morgan Smith. And we're the hosts of Faking It with Ariel and Morgan.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

We're two intimacy coordinators here to talk about the spicy scenes you see in film and TV. I feel like I just recovered from the flu that was going around in January, kind of knocked me out. And then I feel like a week later I immediately got sick again and I was like, why? And then I had two overnights. You didn't.

SPEAKER_04 1:12

I'm still sleepy. It's ridiculous. One overnight, and I'm out for the count for like a month. Actually, for our audience, both of us, we're offered a super last minute gig that would be two hours from now, or maybe even an hour from 20 minutes from now. Yeah, sorry, 20 minutes from now. Not only can we not do it because we're recording right now, but also you can't get any prep done in that time. The rate is terrible. And if you can't financially support your intimacy scenes, then you might want to cut them, particularly because it seemed like this one was new.

SPEAKER_03 1:48

They just added it on the day.

SPEAKER_04 1:50

It's not the way to go. It's not safe.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

I didn't get details of what the intimacy was, but my feeling is that it wasn't like they just added some kissing. I got the vibe that all of a sudden they're simulated sex or nudity or some significant intimacy that you definitely should know about ahead of time and can't just spring on the actor's production. At that point, are you just being a stamp to say that like they did it? They tried. If you're not like, I just I just turned down a job different from this one because there were so many red flags. I was like, I don't actually think I'm being set up to do my job effectively. And I tried to voice like, hey, here are these concerns, here are these things we need to address. And it felt like the production either was not equipped to or was unwilling to make those accommodations. If you're not going to ensure the safety of a scene or to make sure a scene is done properly, then you shouldn't have that scene. I've produced my own stuff, so I understand what it is to work with a certain budget. If you don't have the budget to do certain content in your scene, then don't do that content. Either find a way to get more money or just don't do that thing because you're gonna end up doing harm and no project is worth doing harm.

SPEAKER_04 3:10

Part of our job is to make sure that there is nothing surprising on the day. And that's not to mean that there can't be malleability to the scene or that there's no room for play. There of course is, and we build that into it, but you can't add on a simulated sex scene the day of. And if you are last minute trying to do it, you need to be able to financially support that decision. And if you can't, don't just keep going. Decide if it's worth it, decide if it really tells the story the way you need it to, in which case, maybe, just maybe, a plan to shoot it another day when there's time to actually prep for it to be done safely.

SPEAKER_03 3:51

These are things that are purposely being rushed because that's part of how they keep costs really low.

SPEAKER_04 3:57

Audience, don't forget, they have also lines they've had to learn, which are inevitably have now been changed, and now they have to learn new lines, along with new choreography, along with not being sure, or maybe they are sure, if these new requests are within boundaries. They have so much more to deal with now, and it's so stressful. They're just not gonna do their best work. Anyways, that actually is a perfect segue into our film for today. Uh-oh. Which today we're going to be doing a classic, the 1968 sci-fi sex comedy Barbarella. Woo! Have you seen Barbarella before? No, no, I haven't. What do you know about it, if anything?

SPEAKER_03 4:47

It was Jane Fonda's breakout role. It was highly sexualized, and she regrets doing it. That's all I know.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

Yeah, well, we'll get into the regret of it all a little bit later on. I saw this movie like 10 years ago, and I was like, this is the most insane thing I have ever seen. Everyone was just on every drug. I can't possibly imagine another way in which this was made. I really wanted to mention there was an article in The Guardian that tried to make a log line for the film, like their own log line, and this is the this is perfect. It goes, Barbarella is Mr. Rogers as Jesus Christ as Marilyn Monroe, the sex bomb who will bring about world peace.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

Marilyn Monroe and Mr. Rogers as Christ figures.

SPEAKER_04 5:43

Yes, exactly. So just a little bit of context for what this is. Actors and characters that you'll see throughout these scenes are Jane Fonda as Barbarella and Milo O'Shea as Duran Durand. This was written by Jean-Claude Forrest, who also wrote the best-selling comic strip, Barbarella, that it's based on. Screenplay is by Terry Southern and Roger Vadim, and it's produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by Roger Vadim. Intimacy coordinated by absolutely no one because it's 1968. That would be shocking to me, although there's some timey wime stuff going on in this in this movie. So, like, who's to say? I'm excited. I'm intrigued. This is the intro to this to the film. Okay. So I'm actually gonna give you no context.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

That makes sense. Great. Here we go. All right. Paramount logo. Beautiful. Our media daddy.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

Our media daddy. Well, especially right now, I mean with all this.

SPEAKER_03 6:43

So we're seeing a spaceship. We're coming in from the outside. We see a space person surrounded by classic art floating. I don't know what the space suit is. It looks like it was designed by like Gucci or something. Okay, we're taking the gloves off, the space suit. We see Jane Fonda's hand. The music. Ooh, it's getting jazzy. Oh! Oh!

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Oh!

SPEAKER_03 7:11

This is not your typical space movie. Alright, she's floating around. The backpack of her space suit has come off. Now the legs are coming off. Is this how spacesuits worked? No. Back okay, sure. This is a very sensual way of removing a spacesuit while also zero gravity because she's floating around upside down. Also, they hadn't even gone to the moon yet at the point that this film came out. Okay, now both her legs are out. It looks like she might have practically like been on a glass pane and just rolling around with the camera upside down. The helmet. Are we gonna take it off? Or are we gonna be coy? Oh no! The shield is coming down to slowly reveal Jane Fonda. Looking great. She's real pretty.

SPEAKER_04 8:05

They're taking their time.

SPEAKER_03 8:07

It's the slowest reveal of her face. And she's just like looking out. And now her hair's out. Oh, and she's shaking out the letters of Jane Fonda. I love that. Yes, I love 1960s credits. Another name came out of her suit and is dancing around the screen. She's really happy about it. Oh, she's naked under the spacesuit. And she's looking at all the letters that are shaking and dancing around her and covering her naked bits. David Hemming's name is covering the essentials. Oh, but we see Ariola. She's bent over and totally naked. And we see her chest and a little bit of rear in her back. And her arms are covering her naked chest as she rolls over. Now we see her back. And now she's reaching in a shag rug and turned gravity back on. I mean, taking off a spacesuit is so complicated. And apparently, you really have to take your time and do it so that everyone slowly sees your naked body.

SPEAKER_04 9:14

It's fascinating to use the letters as mild masking, like masking her body parts, but it doesn't really do the best job because ultimately we do see quite a lot.

SPEAKER_03 9:24

It's very fitting for the time, like it's really cheeky and playful, down to like how the letters for the credits are like dancing around, the masking that they're doing. It's all about the T's. I mean, for 1968, showing a fully naked Jane Fonda is pretty scandalous. So the buildup to this makes total sense for the time.

SPEAKER_04 9:45

This is like a two-minute long scene of just pieces coming off, and it's not really explaining anything about the film. There is no exposition as much as this is our star naked. Look, look what we did. We did it. How cool is that?

SPEAKER_03 10:00

I mean, it does establish that we're in space and the movie's about Barbarella and she's gorgeous. Maybe there's art involved in the movie because she had some art pieces behind her.

SPEAKER_04 10:11

Nope. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

Well, the art was there, and it was pretty.

SPEAKER_04 10:16

I had wondered how they shot this scene, and you said she's on a glass plate. I'm like, that's exactly what it is. You figured it out so fast. Mystified. I'm like, she's not wearing a harness. What is she on, man? But also she's shouldn't.

SPEAKER_03 10:33

I think they're shooting an aerial and she's on top of a very clean glass plane because her body stays at the same level the whole time. She's not moving like back and forth in the depth of fields. And it's probably like the least high-tech way to get that shot.

SPEAKER_04 10:48

You gotta love practical effects.

SPEAKER_03 10:50

I love I love practical effects. Nine out of ten times better than CGI, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

It looks so good in this film. She looks great and everything, but just the actual composition of the shot looks very cool, and it looks like she is in um low gravitational field. So that's that's quite cool. Alright, so context for this scene: the villain, Duran Duran, places Barbarella in a device designed to induce lethal pleasure. She survives merely by outlasting it, causing it to malfunction. This is uh iconic, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

He's holding some kind of music sheet or computer code that he's putting into the machine.

SPEAKER_04 11:37

It's the excessive machine.

SPEAKER_03 11:39

The excessive machine. And she's like clamped into this machine, so she's feeling things. It's almost as if someone's like playing a piano on her body, like the piano keys are just on her. It's spitting out all her clothing. That's handy. She seems so confused by the whole thing, which I would be too to be fair. This is a brand new thing. Oh, and now she's sinking into the machine, and more clothing is being spat out. Okay, he's trying to kill her with pleasure. He also seems like he's into this sexually. Like, this is how he gets off. Yeah, by murder. Her head is getting thrown back. It seems like she's getting into orgasm. Now she's exhausted from all this pleasure. Her hair is sweaty, but not too sweaty. She's supposed to be gorgeous. She looks like she might pass out. He keeps trying to play the keys harder. She's enjoying how she's feeling. She's getting sweatier. Her eyes are getting bigger. Oh. And there's more orgasm, I think. He keeps playing the keys. He's like, this is it. I'm gonna kill her. Why won't she die? And she's like, This feels great. I'm in bliss. We see tubes that are starting to steam because the pleasure's getting too much for the machine. There's smoke all around her. She's still feeling it. He's so confused. Why isn't this machine killing her? There's fire. There's fire on the machine. She's still in there. There's fire. Okay, but like get her out of the machine. He's upset. His machine is broken. She blew every fuse. Welcome to the female orgasm. All these big cords coming from the ceiling are on fire. She's still in there. Why should she have shame? You did this to her. It's like typical dude.

SPEAKER_00 13:40

You wish you had died of pleasure before this day is done.

SPEAKER_03 13:43

That's that scene. Well, honestly, this is the best way to go out if there was a way to go out. I love that she beat it, but also if she didn't beat the machine, I'd love that for her too.

SPEAKER_04 13:55

It's very creative. Everyone is so creative. Everybody's so creative. Exactly. It is interesting the way they shot it because his hands are out of frame, so it kind of looks like he's doing a lot arm-wise, that it could be implied that he's doing more with her. But it's interesting to me this versus that first scene because they are willing to show everything in that scene, but in this scene, they're actually very modest. And her orgasm's not over the top, screaming crazy, eyes like clenched, teeth clenched together. She's actually kind of just like blissed out and vibing for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

I mean, I think it's important to remember the time period. In a 1968 mainstream movie, we're not gonna get a big crazy orgasm from a woman. We're not gonna get full-on nudity multiple times in the same movie. So we kind of have to take off her 2026 lens for the time period. This is extremely risque. The fact that they even showed her having a moan to indicate an orgasm is huge. Like this is probably back when you couldn't even say abortion on television. So the idea of showing a woman's pleasure and showing it to this extent was a huge deal for this time. And showing it for as long as they did is like really groundbreaking in a lot of ways. And I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is one of the first big movies to have done this. I'm sure there was some like smaller art house stuff or Andy Warhol stuff that did something, but this is pretty scandalous for the time.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

This film in particular, you know, was one of the biggest commercial successes for like sci-fi sex comedy vibe. It's really fascinating because she does have a large orgasm moment. She does have an ah, like there is a big moan vocal sound, and then the entire machine is set on fire. It's so explosive. It comes down to that question of do we need to see nudity in order to tell the story most effectively? And this scene kind of proves you don't.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

Yeah, I mean, it gets into the conversation of what's the best way to tell this story, and sometimes that is showing more of the body, sometimes that isn't. For the time period, this is showing a lot of her pleasure, and that's so highly unusual for this time. Like I can't really emphasize that enough. It's still considered explicit in movies to show a woman orgasming, like with our current rating system, you're likely to get into NC17 territory if you just focus on a woman's face while she orgasms. So the fact that this movie is doing this in 1968 is a big deal. Because we had that rating system at that time, right? The MPAA kicked in.

SPEAKER_04 16:46

Yeah, dude. Okay. So for reference, Barbarella was released in the US on October 10th, 1968. And the MPAA, uh the Motion Picture Association rating system, officially started November 1st, 1968. So they had started to form it before that time, but I can't say with certainty that it didn't have anything to do with Barbarella in the way that that was proposed.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Censoring content for propriety and for appropriateness for certain audiences has something that had been in conversation for a long time. It sounds like Barbarella didn't have a rating since it snuck in before, so it kind of makes sense that it was able to get away with this much at this time period.

SPEAKER_04 17:30

It was originally featuring a suggested for mature audience tag, because I had those. And then there was a re-release in 77 that got a PG rating, which I I don't know how that happened, but all right.

SPEAKER_03 17:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 17:47

Sure.

SPEAKER_03 17:48

Yeah, we'll have to do a bonus episode all about the rating system in Hollywood because like that whole journey is an amazing idea. I know the movie is silly and I know it's in a lot of ways, not very feminist, but I'm like, the fact that they're showing like her full orgasm and it's breaking the machine. I'm like, that feels pretty revolutionary for that time. And to fully show it that way. And he's saying, like, shame, shame, like you should should feel shame, but we're on her side, so we don't. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_04 18:16

And I mean, the behind the scenes, I have a Vanity Fair article where it said Fonda recalled having to get drunk before shooting the nude scene for Barbarella. It was directed by her then husband, Vadim. And she was struggling with body dysmorphia at the time, and like psychologically, it was very difficult for her to do it. But then on the other side, there is sort of a funny thing where the scene had to be reshot because a bat kept flying between Fonda and the camera.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

For the opening scene? Yeah, the opening scene. Where were they filming that there was a bat present?

SPEAKER_04 18:49

I truly don't know, but I imagine a lot of this was shot on sound stages. So maybe they just had a bat in the sound stage.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

In the sound stage, that's so funny.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

I know. For those who are not aware, like a lot of sound stages are basically banned in Costco. Like they're just huge, huge buildings full of nothing that you can fill with whatever, and they have a light grid on the top. I digress. This was directed by her husband at the time. We haven't discussed uh husband, wife, or partner-partner teams as far as simulated sex or nudity on screen, where one is at a higher hierarchical level than the other person.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

There's a lot of interesting power dynamics at play when you have Jane Fonda being directed by her husband, but she's still Henry Fonda's daughter. I don't know how big her husband was of a director at the time, but she's still a Hollywood legends child. So even though the director is higher up in the hierarchy on a film set, generally speaking, than the lead actor, because film is the director's medium and theater's the actor's one, and TV is the writer's one. There's still a lot going on. And then I also don't know what their particular dynamics within their relationship were. I got the feeling I saw the Jane Fonda documentary forever ago, but I got the feeling a lot of her marriages were like not super helpful and she didn't have a lot of power within those relationships. So I don't know if that was going on here. But I can imagine having to shoot a scene like that when you already are having issues with body dysmorphia and now you're on display, not just in front of your husband, but also in front of a whole crew of people, and it's the 60s, so people have different ideas of like what are appropriate things to say on a set like that. It must have been really challenging for her.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

In that same article I was reading before, she has a quote where she says, Looking back now, I kind of enjoy it, but it was a terrible experience to make. Which, you know, I get it. But I think on that note, maybe let's get into the spice scale.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

Yeah, let's do the spice scale. Welcome to the spice scale, our not so scientific way of writing intimacy scenes based on consent and power dynamics, technical craft and coordination excellence, and heat factor. Each category gets a score from one to five, with five being the highest. Then we add it all up to give the scene a final letter grade. So we already started getting into consent and power dynamics, how the scene depicts consent and power in the story, and if known behind the scenes. I feel like there's more of a conversation around the story of consent and power dynamics in the second scene, since the first scene, she's alone. If we're talking about just in the world of the film. And they're actually really great in the second scene because this guy is literally trying to kill her with her pleasure. And it just makes me think a lot about like how overt Christian puritanical thinking was at this time. We were rebelling against these ideas that we should feel shame about sex. The sexual revolution is in full swing. So here is this older guy trying to tell this young woman, like, you're gonna die because of all the pleasure you're trying to feel. And she was like, No, I'm not. I'm gonna break your fucking machine. And he's like, You should feel shame. She's like, I don't. Sorry, not sorry. Like, I actually just feel great, and your machine is garbage. And I love that. I love that message.

SPEAKER_04 22:05

Kind of inspiring, actually. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:08

I want to break a machine.

SPEAKER_04 22:10

Yeah. I'd love to set fire to a machine with just how much amazing feelings I'm feeling. He thinks he is in control of the situation and that he has the power, but ultimately she has so much sexual power in her body that she is able to overcome what he's trying to do ultimately, which is, you know, it is interesting with consent and power in that first scene, though. In the beginning, the pieces of the astronaut suit are kind of popping off of her. They're being pulled from the ship itself, presumably. And then by the leg, she's pulling off her own things, and she is sort of in charge of the narrative of what's happening at that point. And then there is sort of a pullback where you see this liquid draining from her helmet. It's unclear whether that's her doing. Oh, is that liquid?

SPEAKER_03 22:59

I thought it was like a shield.

SPEAKER_04 23:01

I'm not sure. It looks like liquid to me. Something is showcasing her face at some point. And she is the one with the impetus to pull off piece by piece by piece. And she is sort of covering herself, but it's less an active motion as much as it's like she's just trying to kind of find her footing in this new gravitational space. But going back to that second scene, she is not consenting. She seems more confused.

SPEAKER_03 23:30

I mean, she's not consenting because he's put her in that machine and is doing stuff to her against her will. And then she starts to feel pleasure, but I don't think that indicates that she's consenting. But I mean, I think they're both effective in telling the story they want to tell. Like, I guess I would give it a five because I I didn't see like any discrepancy in what they were trying to say in the scene and what how it was executed.

SPEAKER_04 23:51

Yeah, and I mean it's so comically over the top. They have excessively clear. I mean, it's called the excessive machine. I'm down with five. I'm down with five. Technical craft and coordination excellence. The staging film coverage, modesty protection, choreography, and overall execution of the scene.

SPEAKER_03 24:08

Especially with the first scene, they do a really good job of hiding her pelvis. There's a couple times I think we see Areola. We don't see her rear, especially her butt crack, which I think at that time, like that was a big deal of like seeing the butt crack. I know with like Mary Tyler Moore and the Dick Van Dyke show, it was a big deal when she wore pants and you could see like where her butt cups because the pants were tight enough, and that was a huge scandal. The fact that we were playing with these like very specific rules about what is and isn't decent, and they were pulling that off effectively. I'm like, they did a pretty good job there. And like the letter placement, it's like it was cute, it's cute but effective.

SPEAKER_04 24:50

I really enjoyed the letters, how they like pop out of her suit and everything. I thought that was a lot of fun. I thought it was kind of well done. The choreography, it felt very dance-like in that first scene.

SPEAKER_03 25:02

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:04

As far as like the coverage and modesty protection, I mean, I'm not sure what she was wearing, if anything. I don't think anything in that first scene, but it doesn't seem to me that Ariola or Nipples were off the table as far as boundaries, but that maybe gluteal cleft was. And even we do see like part of her groin, but we don't really see much of it, and we only see it for like a split second. And the other scene, like, she's covered completely by this weird piano machine.

SPEAKER_03 25:31

So yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't even see the top of her breast tissue, it's just like the collarbone. Wait, can we go back for a sec?

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Am I wrong? Maybe I'm wrong. I could have sworn we saw it for like a split second. This is fun to watch again.

SPEAKER_03 25:47

Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_04 25:49

Okay, I think this is the part where she just takes this off.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

Cause she probably is wearing some type of modesty garment, even if it's not an official one like we have now.

SPEAKER_04 26:00

Here, you can't see a lot, but like a split second of it.

SPEAKER_03 26:05

Yeah, the letters like come in pretty quickly. This is very important. No or so important. Okay. That's I think this has some kind of modesty garment on. Because I see some kind of fabric that's covering her pubis, and there's a little bit of pubic hair sticking out. So they either did something in post or she was wearing something.

SPEAKER_04 26:28

That's very possible that she was wearing.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

Do you see what I'm talking about? There's like a distinct line.

SPEAKER_04 26:33

Yes, yeah. I see what you're saying, particularly here around David Hemings.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

Around the N in David Hemings.

SPEAKER_04 26:42

Yeah, there's there's definitely something we're seeing, but then it is covered by letters so quickly that we kind of like lose track of it and then it's gone.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

Yeah, so there's a chance she was doing that naked on the day, but she was doing a lot to like keep her legs together, keeping them crossed, like moving in such a way to try to block that area, which you would do if you had a modesty garment on anyway, but you'd probably be even more cognizant of if you had nothing there.

SPEAKER_04 27:08

I do want to clarify, Jane Fonda doesn't regret doing this film. From my research, I have an a Yahoo News article here. She kind of blames studios for trying to make work like this in the first place. And she said, We have to shame the studios for being so gender biased. We have to show that movies made by women make money. She said she took the easy road for a while and that ended with Barbarella, but she liked playing somebody that caused a certain generation of men to have their first direction. But then when she became an activist, she didn't want to put into that sort of sex object slot anymore. So this is something she wanted to do. She had a hard time doing it. Like some films are difficult to do, but this wasn't a problematic experience for her.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

That's good.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

At least as far as I'm able to tell from research.

SPEAKER_03 28:00

Aside from having to get drunk to do the first scene.

SPEAKER_04 28:03

Jane Fonda has gone on record saying that she wished intimacy coordinators existed at the time, and I think that she would have really benefited from one, frankly, uh, in this situation, so she wouldn't have felt the need to get drunk beforehand. Anyway, back to what we were saying though. So technical crop coordination explains, what do you think?

SPEAKER_03 28:20

I don't think they wanted us to see her pelvis, so I'm gonna ding that just on a four because it's so brief and we had to look back at it, but I'm like, I don't think that was intentional.

SPEAKER_04 28:32

It's so hard because they were not going for authenticity for sure on any of this, particularly that second scene. I wasn't a hundred percent sold on her orgasm expressions on her face, but I also think that it worked for what it was doing. I'm cool with a four. Heat factor.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

I think they're both isn't as hot as they intend them to be. Like the first scene is obviously a striptease.

SPEAKER_04 29:01

Yeah, it's just eroticism.

SPEAKER_03 29:04

Yeah, yeah, that's all it is. And then the second scene as well is just like, oh, we're slowly watching her reach orgasm and break this machine down. We're also seeing this guy kind of getting off on trying to destroy her. For me, it was a five.

SPEAKER_04 29:20

For sure, heard. I think it's really interesting because the first scene is supposed to come across as very sexy and very fluid and almost like a burlesque-ish level, but without the comedic elements. And the second scene is supposed to come across like comedy, it's supposed to be funny. This machine is so ridiculous, and and he's ridiculous. He's like sweating as he's like pressing the piano thing, and he's like, once we get to the chorus, like you'll die. So that one's not particularly trying to be sexy, but there is a sexiness to the fact that she breaks the machine and it gets set on fire. But then I'm very worried for her being in a box with fire surrounding.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Yeah, he leaves her with a box of fire, and I'm like, okay, great, she broke your machine. It feels so bad. Can we get her out though? Because I don't think you're trying to burn her alive.

SPEAKER_04 30:06

Oh no. And literally, but the funny thing is, it's like this is the like a side note of a side note. But if you if his goal is to kill her, like leaving her in a box that's on fire is probably like a pretty decent way to do that.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Yeah, I have a feeling there was something specifically about defeating her via pleasure that he needed. I haven't seen the movie, so you can correct me on this. But he seemed like the type of villain that was like, I need to defeat you in this specific way in order for it to be satisfying. It's not eliminate you in any way, shape, or form. It's like it has to feel like personal.

SPEAKER_04 30:42

Okay, fair enough. I like that. I like that. All right, so then are we going, we going with a five or we're going for a five? We're gonna go for a sexy little five, which beats us too for our millionth time in A! A.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

All right, so Ariel. Yes. We have a new segment now that we do when we have an A scene. Ruin it! Ruin it! So, how would we ruin these scenes? And I'm gonna add the parameters of like given the time period too.

SPEAKER_04 31:20

Well, it's interesting because usually when we ruin it, it's because it got an A because it's coming from the female gaze. We kind of push it to the male gaze, and that kind of tends to ruin it in some way. But this is from the male gaze already. So, okay, you could go comedic with that first scene, and you could have her like having a lot of trouble getting the outfit, getting it off. Breasts aren't jiggling in the space as she's like pulling off pieces of the outfit. That would make it much less fluid and sexy looking.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

Yeah, she's hairier, like her legs aren't silky smooth, and she has helmet hair when she takes it off and like sweaty, smudged up makeup because she was like in a spacesuit. That's practical. You made it realistic. Yes.

SPEAKER_04 32:04

Oh, you know what would ruin it? Regular gravity. Like she's just standing there and like pulling off one piece, the other piece. Like that would suck. How would we ruin the second scene? It's so insane.

SPEAKER_03 32:18

I keep thinking of ways that it would make it better, but not ways that I would ruin it. I'm like, if she like made eye contact with him while she was like defeating the machine, just staring at me. Like, that would make it better for me, not worse. It's very general, it's just her being touched, and I assume there's other stuff happening in the machine because it's obviously like taking her clothes off. I don't know if she's being penetrated by the machine underneath or something. But I think it's actually funnier that it's not specific.

SPEAKER_04 32:46

Yeah, I think it would ruin it if it were more specific. I think if we knew exactly the parameters of what it is that is making her feel good, maybe it's a tiny piano on top of her vulva and tiny pianos on top of her breasts. That would make it horrible. It'd be so weird looking and just like the comedy would be destroyed. It would just be about her body instead of the situation.

SPEAKER_03 33:09

Yeah. Yeah. I just realized too. It's like a piano, or it's like, you know, when a cat is making biscuits.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

Making biscuits.

SPEAKER_03 33:17

That's kind of what the machine is doing on her. Oh my god. Here's another way to think about it. If they rebooted this movie and we're like, we're gonna do like a 2026 version, yeah, and we're gonna we're gonna cast Margot Robbie and she's gonna be fucking the machine. I mean, I'm not sure. I love Margot Robbie, but that's what they would do.

SPEAKER_04 33:35

I Oh, for sure. Here is the dildo attached to the high smith machine. Like, and there it is, the excessive machine.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah, it becomes so excessive that it would become excessive. There's nothing campy about it. It's not campy, it's not fun. They go for something that's too real, they miscast the machine as an animal or I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 33:59

Cool. I I think we've sufficiently roomed it. These scenes were interesting. I think Barbarella is really interesting because it shows how you know early cinema treated sexuality as this visual spectacle first and human experience second. And the nudity and simulated pleasure scenes are really designed around fantasy, performance, the male gaze instead of you know character-driven consent, communication, any level of emotional realism, you know.

SPEAKER_03 34:28

This is something we've talked about because we try to have variety in the types of projects we discuss, and we're like, man, like how come we can't get stuff before the 80s? And it's actually really hard because a lot of it, a lot of movies before that time and television shows really didn't show very much intimacy because they couldn't for a lot of different reasons. And took a long time before we really started to see stuff, and this is still like such an early version of like, oh, we're really seeing stuff on screen. We're we're seeing her orgasm. And like, I don't think you could say pregnant on TV at this point, but you could see her orgasm, like it's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 35:05

Absolutely. Do you have anything to plug?

SPEAKER_03 35:08

I'm gonna guest on scary movie and a sandwich with my buddy Artem. We're talking about this scary movie called Titane that I started to watch last night, French horror movie where this woman ends up fucking a car, and I was like fascinating. I'm in. Started watching it. And the part that Artem forgot to mention is that she's a serial killer and does a lot of like really graphic violence to people in between the car fucking. And so I'm slowly making my way through because I just emotionally can't handle really intense horror. Yeah, no, neither can I. The podcast is great. We're gonna eat a very specific sandwich inspired by the movie and talk about the movie and how it relates to intimacy. And you're gonna see me post-watching this movie, shell-shocked, probably. So it should be a good time. Do you?

SPEAKER_04 35:58

There is a vertical on the app candy jar that's called French Kiss. Christmas, France, romance, it's very cute. There's kissing under the Holly, there's burlesque. It's it's a lot of fun, and I really, really enjoyed being on that one. Oh yay! Thanks so much for listening to Faking It. This episode's research and context was done by me, Ariel.

SPEAKER_03 36:21

You can find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you get your podcast. New episodes drop every other hump day, Wednesday.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

If this was good for you, the best way to support our show is to follow the podcast and leave a quick rating or review. It takes less than 30 seconds. Here's one we got recently from Eva Los Angeles. The title is funny, charming, and informative. It says, Love getting the perspectives of intimacy coordinators. This is such a unique take, and they add such great stories to each episode. So funny and easy to listen to on my way to work.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

I love it. We love it, Eva Los Angeles. Thank you, Eva Los Angeles. Okay, that's so nice.

SPEAKER_03 37:07

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SPEAKER_04 37:13

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SPEAKER_03 37:30

This episode was produced by Ariel Lee Cohen. Social media and branding by Borgett Smith. Our theme song is faking it by Mike Getz. Credits for the film or show we reacted to are in the episode caption. Stay real fakers. Ow!

SPEAKER_04 37:46

Why is it like a howl? Ooh! Ooh! That's the faker call. The faker call! Fakers arise!