I had a look through the article and just some points/comments in no particular order.
I don't like Jack Black and if a friend said they did like Jack Black I might have to rethink our friendship. However, the argument that the film is sexist because Kate Winslet is much hotter than him is crap. If we said that Brad Pitt would never sleep with say, Whoopi Goldberg because she is really ugly, well that might be a sexist statement. Without the specific people in it the position is that no good looking man or woman would bother with inferior meat. But maybe that's not so much sexism as it is not liking ugly people and maybe you are ok with that If you are, you are kind of an asshole.
If I recall correctly Seth from Superbad is not the moral voice of the film. That was the kid who was in Juno. Seth is a creepy deranged monster and the point is that you laugh at his ridiculousness. If you watched the film thinking the writers thought that Seth was right about anything you did not understand the film. The film was also about him growing up a bit, realising that it was ok and not weird to be emotionally connected to people and maybe being less of a moron. If he appeals to people it is because he is a voice that some of us have that is unworthy of us but comes from growing up in a world where men and women are adversaries. Worse than adversaries really. The film, if I am not crediting it with too strong an ethical imperative, describes how the roles men and women are adopted by can be contaminated by one another and how the fear of that contamination pulls people into these bizarre contortions of masculinity and femininity. And, maybe, it says it might be best to unwind oneself out of them.
The devil wears prada was a weird one. Every last man I know thought it was stale and that the cult of shallowness it celebrated was repellent. I would guess that half the women I know loved it and the other half felt the same as the men. A quarter of the people, if the people I knew were somehow representative of the general population and they're not, would still be a pretty good demographic to dominate in.
I never saw the john Tucker film or the Uma Thurman superwoman film. Thurman picks some awful films and I don't know why she does because she is so clearly capable of more.
Sin City was definitely sexist but it was also a brilliant film. It would be great if all sexist or in some way questionable films were badly written, poorly directed and visually unappealing. Sin City aped the noir dialogue convincingly and the repetition of key lines enhanced the meaning of those lines but in a way that was always relevant to the context and in some cases such as "A young girl lives, an old man dies. fair trade" was the whole story. Its a pity the sexism ruined it for you because Sin City was a triumph in every other department. Especially the aesthetics.
I was never even aware of hustle and flow and wedding crashers was simply not funny. No one, not even the men it focused on, appeared as a human being in it. The all powerful pillar/dick thing at the end embarrassing. I was never going to be willing to watch 13 going on 30 so I have no idea what the content of that was like. If I was going to take a guess though it was a promotion of gender stereotypes film for young women. If that was so it is a much more repulsive film than Superbad.
As for Brown Bunny in some ways real sex might be less ridiculous than what passes for sex in films. Sex is often ridiculous but the simulacrum hollywood shows is usually ridiculous because it has nothing to do with sex. Often the bizarre things that go on in sex scenes describe and stand for some political position. In the 1970s people were offended by the Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland's sex scene in Don't Look now because it seemed too real. It was closer to what sex is. Sex is the flesh and blood act but it is also the getting dressed after and it is the going to the sex act. Sex is desire but also resignation, sometimes embarrassing but at other times the absence of embaressement, it is funny but sometimes quite serious, it is being tired and feeling some kind of tenderness for the other person. It is understanding the other person but at other times not understanding or knowing them at all. Imagine that sex is like chess in some ways (possibly not the adversarial ways or maybe that does it for you), made up of different pieces, dependent on agreed rules and the context for meaning. If you imagine that you see that pornography is at best a parody of sex. Its takes a piece like a rook off the board and says it is still a rook when its not on the chessboard. It is not. Its a funny shaped rock in the absence of the board. Sex is not sex without the otherstuff going on. Hollywood on the other hand often rewrites the rules of chess and then selectively removes pieces. If one were to learn about sex or chess this way one would have a highly problematic understanding of sex or chess. And yet somehow these are in contention for being our norms. I have taken my Wittgenstein chess piece anologies far enough now but I kind of just want to say that it might be necessary to show what a blowjob is so that hollywood does not forget.
It might be my memory but wasn't that Julia Roberts film supposed to be really sad because things don't work out. If the intended effect is sadness you can't say it is antifeminism because we are supposed to feel for and not laugh at. Also, sad films are more motivating than happy ones. I don't care because it was not an interesting filmand my memory of the film is kind of sketchy. No opinion on the Reese Witherspoon thing apart from i would bet that the person who got the most benefit out of that film was probably reese Witherspoon.
You are spot on about the Mel Gibson one. That film is just wrong. Dislike Mel if you wish (I think, because i don't know him in real life, he is very funny) you can't deny he makes a technically good film and that he can in fact act. Even if I want to dislike him on screen he can be very charming.
I had a look through the article and just some points/comments in no particular order.
I don't like Jack Black and if a friend said they did like Jack Black I might have to rethink our friendship. However, the argument that the film is sexist because Kate Winslet is much hotter than him is crap. If we said that Brad Pitt would never sleep with say, Whoopi Goldberg because she is really ugly, well that might be a sexist statement. Without the specific people in it the position is that no good looking man or woman would bother with inferior meat. But maybe that's not so much sexism as it is not liking ugly people and maybe you are ok with that If you are, you are kind of an asshole.
If I recall correctly Seth from Superbad is not the moral voice of the film. That was the kid who was in Juno. Seth is a creepy deranged monster and the point is that you laugh at his ridiculousness. If you watched the film thinking the writers thought that Seth was right about anything you did not understand the film. The film was also about him growing up a bit, realising that it was ok and not weird to be emotionally connected to people and maybe being less of a moron. If he appeals to people it is because he is a voice that some of us have that is unworthy of us but comes from growing up in a world where men and women are adversaries. Worse than adversaries really. The film, if I am not crediting it with too strong an ethical imperative, describes how the roles men and women are adopted by can be contaminated by one another and how the fear of that contamination pulls people into these bizarre contortions of masculinity and femininity. And, maybe, it says it might be best to unwind oneself out of them.
The devil wears prada was a weird one. Every last man I know thought it was stale and that the cult of shallowness it celebrated was repellent. I would guess that half the women I know loved it and the other half felt the same as the men. A quarter of the people, if the people I knew were somehow representative of the general population and they're not, would still be a pretty good demographic to dominate in.
I never saw the john Tucker film or the Uma Thurman superwoman film. Thurman picks some awful films and I don't know why she does because she is so clearly capable of more.
Sin City was definitely sexist but it was also a brilliant film. It would be great if all sexist or in some way questionable films were badly written, poorly directed and visually unappealing. Sin City aped the noir dialogue convincingly and the repetition of key lines enhanced the meaning of those lines but in a way that was always relevant to the context and in some cases such as "A young girl lives, an old man dies. fair trade" was the whole story. Its a pity the sexism ruined it for you because Sin City was a triumph in every other department. Especially the aesthetics.
I was never even aware of hustle and flow and wedding crashers was simply not funny. No one, not even the men it focused on, appeared as a human being in it. The all powerful pillar/dick thing at the end embarrassing. I was never going to be willing to watch 13 going on 30 so I have no idea what the content of that was like. If I was going to take a guess though it was a promotion of gender stereotypes film for young women. If that was so it is a much more repulsive film than Superbad.
As for Brown Bunny in some ways real sex might be less ridiculous than what passes for sex in films. Sex is often ridiculous but the simulacrum hollywood shows is usually ridiculous because it has nothing to do with sex. Often the bizarre things that go on in sex scenes describe and stand for some political position. In the 1970s people were offended by the Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland's sex scene in Don't Look now because it seemed too real. It was closer to what sex is. Sex is the flesh and blood act but it is also the getting dressed after and it is the going to the sex act. Sex is desire but also resignation, sometimes embarrassing but at other times the absence of embaressement, it is funny but sometimes quite serious, it is being tired and feeling some kind of tenderness for the other person. It is understanding the other person but at other times not understanding or knowing them at all. Imagine that sex is like chess in some ways (possibly not the adversarial ways or maybe that does it for you), made up of different pieces, dependent on agreed rules and the context for meaning. If you imagine that you see that pornography is at best a parody of sex. Its takes a piece like a rook off the board and says it is still a rook when its not on the chessboard. It is not. Its a funny shaped rock in the absence of the board. Sex is not sex without the otherstuff going on. Hollywood on the other hand often rewrites the rules of chess and then selectively removes pieces. If one were to learn about sex or chess this way one would have a highly problematic understanding of sex or chess. And yet somehow these are in contention for being our norms. I have taken my Wittgenstein chess piece anologies far enough now but I kind of just want to say that it might be necessary to show what a blowjob is so that hollywood does not forget.
It might be my memory but wasn't that Julia Roberts film supposed to be really sad because things don't work out. If the intended effect is sadness you can't say it is antifeminism because we are supposed to feel for and not laugh at. Also, sad films are more motivating than happy ones. I don't care because it was not an interesting filmand my memory of the film is kind of sketchy. No opinion on the Reese Witherspoon thing apart from i would bet that the person who got the most benefit out of that film was probably reese Witherspoon.
You are spot on about the Mel Gibson one. That film is just wrong. Dislike Mel if you wish (I think, because i don't know him in real life, he is very funny) you can't deny he makes a technically good film and that he can in fact act. Even if I want to dislike him on screen he can be very charming.