In real life, if you violate a woman’s bodily autonomy by impregnating her without her consent, it’s usually considered a bad thing. In movies, it’s considered the most unexpected comedy ever conceived! Kill me now.
As a subpoint of fail, The Baster appeared on 2008′s Black List, Hollywood’s annual list of the best unproduced screenplays. For. Real.
Does the world seriously need lingerie beer cans that look like a woman’s upper thighs and crotch when lined up side by side? Seriously? I love the inset photo of an actual woman’s upper thighs and crotch in lingerie, in case you have an incredibly poor imagination. This is the world we live in.
Proving already that Kathryn Bigelow’s win will not change attitudes towards women in film overnight, Disney decides to rename Rapunzel so that they don’t alienate boys from seeing a movie about a girl. And in case that doesn’t work, they’ve modified the prince character by making his role bigger and turning him into a swashbuckling Errol Flynn type personality.
I actually don’t hate the title Tangled, to be honest, I just wish people would realise this kind of thing is a band aid solution to the problem of how we culturally condition children to like or dislike things based on gender. You’re not going to solve the problem of boys not liking movies about girls by changing their titles, you’re going to solve the problem by raising boys to know that girls are just as interesting as boys and that your ability to relate to someone’s story isn’t tied up in your genitals.
To leave you with something positive: this butternut squash soup is really delicious.
Happy International Women’s Day! Do you know how I spent the last twenty minutes? COVERED IN BLOOD, on account of the horrific nosebleed I gave myself trying to respond to someone who commented on my “KATHRYN BIGELOW!” status update on Facebook to tell me there is no gender inequity in Hollywood.
Now that Stephen Harper is finished proroguing the government so he can hang out 24/7 with Wayne Gretzky at the Olympics (poor Wayne), apparently one of the super pressing issues presented in today’s throne speech was about starting a public discussion on making the lyrics to O Canada gender neutral. The offending line is “True patriot love in all thy sons’ command”. Rick Mercer asked for people’s thoughts on this on Twitter and I have to agree with the people who said “I can literally think of a hundred things that would help women more than re-wording ‘O Canada’” and also “I’d rather we spent money/efforts educating why and how sexist language is deleterious. We can use O Canada as example.”
Also, after reading through too many additional responses to Rick Mercer’s tweet, the number of Canadians who think it’s “Oh Canada” and not “O Canada” upsets me. People, you should know this!
And speaking of Twitter, I’ve been enjoying VoiceInPMsHead, which is Scott Feschuk of Maclean’s pretending to tweet from the inside of Stephen Harper’s brain. I think my favourite recently was “While you’ve been watching the Olympics, I’ve been busy: I now know TWO Beatles songs on the piano. Check and mate.” Oh Steve. Never change.
I’ve already complained about this somewhere (probably Facebook) but I will complain again: the only downside to winning lots of medals is having to endure CTV’s awful, awful medal winners’ montages set to the increasingly obnoxious and grammatically incorrect “I Believe”.
I want to list five theoretical events that Canadian athletes may or may not have participated in tonight:
If Canada were to win four medals in three of the events and absolutely nothing in the fourth one, which one event would be the lead story on many major news outlets in Canada?
If you guessed the event were no one won anything, you’d be correct! (Cut for ire and accompanying illustrations!)
This has been getting lots of linkage today, but I thought I’d share anyway in case you missed it:
How the Bechdel Test could save the Oscars[The stories of white men] are being told, our concerns are being addressed, our grievances are being aired; all is well in White Boy Town. But that is not so. First off, any group that only hears it own stories is not getting the full story. Surrounded by only look-and-think-alikes, it becomes impossible not to become parochial and stagnant. After all, one of the main social benefits of fiction is the encouragement of empathy, and these narrow narratives deny us its full expression.
But as much social harm as excluding half the population from being fully realized fictional characters does, I’d say it does even greater damage to movies as an art form. Think about it. Any screenwriter/director/producer that can’t think of anything more for a woman to do than be a girlfriend, wife, mother, or kidnapped daughter is probably going to lack imagination in other areas as well. A filmmaker who only sees minorities as Issues or wacky sidekicks is, more likely than not, a hack.
Ultimately: yes. That’s really all I have to add.
I recently started tagging my movie reviews according to whether or not they pass the Bechdel test and, depressingly and predictably, so far I’ve only gotten to use bechdel test: fail. Eventually I’ll work my way backwards and tag everything else, but I don’t doubt for a second that the FAIL tag is the one that will get the most usage. I should probably also start using a Deggan’s Rule tag as well, but likely the results would be just as bleak.
Not being someone who has cable, I usually only encounter movie advertising in two places: at the movie theatre and on the subway. Every day for the last week or so I have got on the subway only to encounter the most obnoxious movie ads I’ve seen in a long time. They’re for the evocatively titled Valentine’s Day that comes out next week and they make me want to lovingly caress the third rail every time I see them.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the subway version of the ads that are displayed on either side of the subway doors, so I’ve had to approximate them here. (My ire is so great that it compels me to open Photoshop. I recognize I have a problem.)
While I haven’t managed to recreate the obviously finely crafted taglines for each ad, I think I’ve captured the unique and not remotely stereotypical attitude behind the sentiments. Except for “WHAT A DAY”, which is what that poster actually does say in real life.
Allow me to use an unordered list to express my hatred, since no one can refute an unordered list: (more…)
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