Worth the price of admission? via arthur1227 @ flickr
The time for summer movies is upon us, and Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott of The New York Times has decided to send a memo to Hollywood telling them how to improve the films that come out during the season most dedicated to mindless entertainment. While reading the article, I tried to tally the big summer movies I’ve seen in theaters in the past few years, going back to 2006, and I came up with precisely two: Superman Returns and Sex and the City, both of which I was dragged to by my little sister. I resisted the lure of Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, and didn’t even see Iron Man when everyone else was raving about it. It’s just not my cup of
Now, I am not completely averse to mindless entertainment — after all, I own all six Star Wars films. And I am planning to see one of the big summer films, namely Angels & Demons (it has Ewan McGregor, and I’m only human). But by and large, summer movie season is arguably the worst time of year to see movies with strong representations of women, not that the films distributed throughout rest of the year are always doing such a bang-up job. I have to agree with most of the Times article’s recommendations, particularly as they deal with women and LGBT issues. Oh, and then there’s the one recommendation at the end that really pissed me off. Such is the frustration of reading The New York Times.
The first one is directed at Pixar’s John Lasseter, from Manohla Dargis (M.D.):
I’m psyched that you and the guys at Pixar Animation Studios are finally making a movie with a girl as the lead character and with a woman as director, no less — another first for you! Congrats! Of course we have to wait until 2011 to see “The Bear and the Bow,” but on behalf of 51 percent of the population, I salute you.
A girl as lead! They should have figured that out ages ago. After all, the real heart in Finding Nemo was Ellen DeGeneres’ character Dory. It is frustrating to see Pixar animated movies always trotting out male pixelated characters like in Cars, Toy Story, Ratatouille, even WALL-E. The Incredibles at least had an entire family, but what about a movie with a female protagonist in a starring role? What’s even more annoying about this is that Pixar’s characters are often not human, so there is not the tendency that the Disney movies of the ’80s and ’90s had to dress the heroines in seashell bras or harem pants and give them perfectly flat stomachs. If Finding Nemo had been about a female clownfish, Pixar probably would have resisted the temptation to put lipstick on her, and that would have been damn refreshing.
To: Screenwriters, From: M.D.
Enough with the dead moms: I appreciate that the Bambi Principle is one of the tenets of mainstream narrative cinema and a surefire way to make us feel something for your characters. Yet in the past few years, the dead mothers club has grown awfully crowded what with the additions of “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Uninvited,” “Nim’s Island,” “The Secret Life of Bees,” “Sunshine Cleaning,” “Knowing,” “Then She Found Me,” “Shoot ’Em Up,” “The Kite Runner,” “Grace Is Gone,” “Smart People,” “Eastern Promises,” “Dan in Real Life,” “No Reservations,” “Hannah Montana,” “Mister Foe” and “I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry.” I’m sure it’s nothing personal about women (right?) and that you love your mothers (not that it’s any of my business), but some more time on the couch might be in order. (P.S. Does John Cusack not like being fictionally married? He played a widower in “The Contract,” “Martian Child” and “Grace Is Gone.” Just asking.)
While I’m not quite sure I’d include Eastern Promises in that list (it wasn’t done for decorative purposes and, unfortunately, there would have been zero mystery if the young mother had not died in childbirth), I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. When I watched Disney movies growing up, all I could wonder was, “why are all the moms missing?” This wasn’t some grand statement on the awesomeness of single-parent households, but a nice way to dispose of a woman. And it’s really tired, unnecessary, and a cheap tug at the heartstrings. Nothing gets people crying into their popcorn like dead women!
To: Straight filmmakers, From: M.D.
Enough with the gay slurs, the gay baiting, imitating, limp-wristing, so-not-funny lisping — in other words, enough with the hating. Yeah, some gay men are hilarious (Oscar Wilde). But people are funny, their identities are not. Try this simple test: Every time you feel the need to mock or denigrate gay men or lesbians, replace that joke with an equally vicious dig about African-Americans or Jews. Doesn’t sound so funny anymore, does it?
I would add Ian McKellen and the late Graham Chapman to the list of gay men who are hilarious. And Dargis is right: this shit is tired. I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is sort of the epitome of how summer movies deal with gayness: they mock marriage equality and milk it for cheap laughs and an opportunity for Jessica Biel to take off her bra. Oh, and while I Love You Man may not have come out during the summer, it’s bromance theme provided ample opportunity to pigeonhole gays as sluts or effeminates. Enough. There’s that old saying, “Will it play in Peoria?” which was used to determine whether an idea was mainstream enough to be marketed to mass audiences. Well, gay marriage is currently playing in Iowa. Get with the times already.
To: Lionsgate, Cc: Extreme horror filmmakers and fanatics, From: M.D.
Yuck! Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s only a movie. But if films don’t have any wider meaning in the culture, don’t have real impact on minds and bodies, why do so many of us dedicate our lives to obsessing over them?
And stop with the posters of a woman bound up and terrified, sometimes with a single tear rolling down her cheek. Mass-marketing fantasies about attacking women are not something I ever want to see plastered on the side of a bus.
To: Anyone who can make this happen, From: Dargis.
More Rachel McAdams, please. Also, James Franco.
I’m kind of meh on McAdams, but YES PLEASE to the second half of her request.
You may notice, by the way, that I have only featured Dargis’ memos. Now I will include one of Scott’s, but only because the way the request is framed makes clench my fists in rage.
To: Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Cc: Every actress in Hollywood, From: A.O.S.
Calories: please consume more of them.
Oh, you’re so clever to trot out the old “eat a sandwich!” line! I’m sure they’ve never heard that before. Also, when was the last time either of the Olsens was in a blockbuster film? And Mary-Kate Olsen had to be treated for an eating disorder, so that’s really the wrong fucking tack to take. If you want to make a point about the dangerously thin body types in Hollywood, maybe you should start by slamming the actual industry that perpetuates extreme skinniness as the norm — and then still airbrushes the women on movie posters. Believe me, I get pissed off when all I ever see are rail-thin women running around onscreen, but telling the actresses to eat more is not really going to cut it. Maybe try actually working on the cultural factors that pressure the women to believe this is the only way to be beautiful, and how Hollywood generally will have no use for you unless you’re a size 00. Mr. Scott, you have the right sentiment, but you’re choosing wrong way to go about trying to change things.
“replace that joke with an equally vicious dig about African-Americans or Jews. Doesn’t sound so funny anymore, does it?”
I think many would think it sounds funny, unforch.
@Sarah: But we are living in a post-racial, post-feminist world!
I will never again trust Manohla Dargis after she deliberately included a major spoiler in her review of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. I watched (and appreciated) the movie anyway, but knowing the ending ahead of time seriously detracted from my movie-watching experience. I was really disappointed in her decision to spoil the movie-watching experience for her readers just because she didn’t like the movie herself.
(Sorry, that had nothing to do with the summer movies — I’m just pissed at Manohla Dargis of late!)
@kivrin: I am not a huge Dargis fan overall (I prefer Scott’s reviewing style), but she did hit the nail on the head with this memo. Major spoilers are not okay in a review. That was why everyone was so shocked when they saw The Crying Game — the reviewers had the good sense to know that the mystery of the twist rather than a spoiler would pull the viewers in.
Yeah, I’m generally a fan of Scott’s reviews, too — so I’m definitely disappointed by his “eat a sammich” comment. C’mon, NYTimes — you’re my major source for movie reviews! Please don’t let me down!
Re the pic: I demand to know where this $4.00 movie theatre is!
@PhD: Looks like a matinee, so maybe that explains it. Matinee prices are rarer than unicorns!
“It is frustrating to see Pixar animated movies always trotting out male pixelated characters like in Cars, Toy Story, Ratatouille, even WALL-E.”
Yeah, tell me about it, men totally shouldn’t be allowed to exist in movies, because they don’t exist in real life after all. Oh and we might as well just forget that EVE was a strong female co-star in WALL-E, because then we couldn’t whine about all those evil menfolk.
/sarcasm
I’m glad Pixar is finally giving us a female protagonist (especially since their next movie, Up, appears not to have any women at all!) but it bothers me that their long-awaited first female protagonist is ALSO their first traditional fantasy movie… because that’s the only kind of movie that GURLZ will like! I’ve always wanted more female characters from them because when they actually remember that women exist, they do really well by them– Elastigirl and Violet had a great relationship in the Incredibles.
Maybe Pixar only got half the memo?
Emphasis on CO-star, Matt.
Why does desiring more female protagonists = man-hating, in your mind?
Tell me, Matt, why you’re so threatened by a blog post by a woman pointing out the inarguable fact that Pixar (for all their skills in animation and more importantly story-telling) has given female voices and stories and perspectives short shrift? No, on second thought, don’t tell me, I’m sure I already know: your privilege got noted and your knee started jerking. Maybe, rather than attempting to shame sarah for having an opinion (how dare she!) you calm the fuck down and consider how little you’ve done to warrant the world revolving around you.
(P.S. I don’t suggest you argue with me about animation. You will lose.)
@Matt: Wow, seriously? We don’t hate men here. We’re asking for equal time, something that is not out of line at all. By all means, movies should be made with strong male characters — as long as there is equal representation of female characters. Half the population should get half the representation onscreen. Seems simple enough to me.
Are you saying that the movies cited should have been modified to include equal numbers of men and women, or that equal number of men/women centered movies should be produced? Just wondering.
When it comes to the dead moms, I have to defend the filmmakers here. Several of the movies on that list are based on short stories or novels, and the old fairy tale movies are all, of course, based on pre-existing fairy tales. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be more movies with living moms, and maybe the filmmakers made bad choices to produce so many movies with dead moms, but I suspect they were focusing far more on the overall plot than on that one aspect.
When it comes to fairy tales, there’s actually a reason so many of them come with dead moms. In the nineteenth century and thereabouts, people were taking the old, traditional tales and sanitizing them, making them less creepy and more moral. One of the things that was done to a lot of stories was to kill the mother and put a stepmother in her place or just leave her out; obviously, they reasoned, no real mother would try to kill her daughter or send her to live with a beast. Not to mention that the fairy tales came out of a relatively more patriarchal culture to begin with.
@Blake: I’m saying that 51% of the moviegoing public are women and girls, and they should receive proportional representation. And that doesn’t mean token roles. I’m not about to go over every film with a fine-tooth comb and prepare a movie role census, but there is a glaring difference between the type of screen time women get compared to what men do. I’m not suggesting that films released last year or the year before be modified, because that would be impossible.
@Clare: I know, but this tendency has continued way beyond the old fairy tales. Dargis cites entirely new stories, and even Finding Nemo had the mother dying in the first three minutes of the film.
I’m saying that 51% of the moviegoing public are women and girls, and they should receive proportional representation. And that doesn’t mean token roles.
Well whose to really say that with the remake-mania now so common, that any movie formerly led by guys might not get made with a woman in the lead, wouldn’t that be great! No reason movies couldnt be modified in newer versions. Whats old can be new again maybe. Luke become Lucy.. Indiana become Hanna Montana.. wait THAT won’t work
You know, Wonder Woman didn’t get really the same attention far more obscure figures such as Iron Man got.
Sarah, I will also be seeing A&D and I’d love to blame Ewan McGregor, but the truth is I love that book to an embarrassing degree.
This doesnt really look like a good discussion site, with apologies, because since there are like, five or six blog posters, by the time you get to think about and post, they’ve moved way on. Im posting on a blog thats now 7 posts deep. Oh well. I liked the messages.
[...] the sequel worth the price of admission? via arthur1227 @ flickr I don’t usually indulge in summer movies, but I’ve splurged on a trip to see Angels & Demons twice in the past two weeks. Okay, [...]