Comments on: Poor Ken: only girls will play with him!

By: snobographer

snobographer — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 21:14:56 +0000

@GayProf, NotoriousPhD – Everything anti-girl is also anti-gay and vice versa.
The very existence of gay guys threatens to make all men into honorary women. Gay-hate is woman-hate.

By: Aeryl

Aeryl — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 17:22:26 +0000

YAY!! More feminists liking RED. I thought it was awesome(Helen Mirren, Submachine Gun!?!? You had me hello, baby).

And even though it does the whole “heroic man must kidnap woman for her own good” thing, the movie didn’t play it as something cute & sweet, but as something she SHOULD be mad about, and she even got to rescue herself(and had to be rescued again, you really shouldn’t call the police when on the run from the CIA, but like she was supposed to know that).

And there was awesome diversity amongst the female cast, silly goofy n00b, experienced, yet warm hearted, assasin, and cold-blooded, single minded administrator, and it gave examples of women choosing their careers over “Love!” No one was cookie cutter or a stereotype.

All the ageist characters get their just desserts too! Plus Richard Dreyfuss is making hand over fist now that he’s got that Cheney impersonation down.

By: takingitoutside

takingitoutside — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 06:42:10 +0000

I wanted to see Secretariat, but it left the theatre near me too quickly. I ended up seeing RED instead - have you seen it? It's a good antidote to filmmakers like the ones quoted. I wrote about it a bit on my blog. There are more main male characters than female, as always, but the movie does a much better job of integrating female characters into the entire film (as both good guys and bad guys) than most action films. And of the two members of the main couple, the man does most of the angsting and talking about the relationship by far. Also, the assassination attempt-scenes were really cool. (What can I say, I like explosions in my action movies. Helen Mirren with more weapons than I can even attempt to name? Awesome.)

By: Indyanna

Indyanna — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:47:40 +0000

That was a good, and funny, and punchy, and hard-hitting, and apt, review of the presumed review of The Social Network, Historiann. (Which I havn’t seen either). You didn’t miss much of the 1960s from 1-4. Most of the good stuff, and some of the bad stuff, was all over by the spring of 1968. Alas. It was less and less “Woodstock,” and more and more “Altamont,” after that.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:30:40 +0000

Roger Ebert says it much better, and with much better recall, than I can.

Janice–put down the paint roller and take your poor child to see the damn movie!

By: Janice

Janice — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:15:21 +0000

Oh, thanks for the link to Twisty’s site. That was worthwhile!

Along these lines, I must give another hat tip to Roger Ebert’s rebuttal of the Salon review of “Secretariat”: http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/10/secretariat_was_not_a_christia.html

I was an avid Secretariat fan as a youngster and I still have the big coffee table book that my doting parents gifted me the Christmas after his Triple Crown victory. I’ve passed the love on for Big Red to my teenager who’s pining for a chance to see the movie (maybe after we finish the interior painting that’s holding us up at the moment). Sure, the movie Secretariats have nothing on the real thing (the one in the posters makes me cringe because he has a short, weak neck with a rough head), but the story is gripping!

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 02:04:46 +0000

I don’t want to make it sound like Secretariat is the greatest movie evah. But if you like sports movies, I think you’ll enjoy it. (Even though you probably know the outcome. I did too, and it was still exciting.)

By: KC

KC — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 01:20:08 +0000

I haven’t seen the movie, but the review was so over-the-top that I wanted to get the perspective of someone who had seen it. Thanks. I’ve read in various places about the misogyny in The Social Network, which is one of the reasons I don’t want to see it. I find it harder and harder to get interested in Hollywood films anymore, simply because they usually strike me as over-simplified constructions that use tired techniques in order to play on the emotions of the audience.

That said, I’ve always been a sucker for sports movies, so I will probably relent and see Secretariat if for no reason other than the racing sequences.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:36:49 +0000

KC–the author of that review seems to believe that there was only one experience of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and that Americans all had the same experience he did so any representation of another experience is dishonest. I was only 1-4 years old in 1969-73, but I can say that my experience of those years was very different from his. The author seems angry that the filmmakers chose not to portray his version of 1969-73, which is an odd demand to make of a movie which is, after all, about the kind of psychotic world of thoroughbred horse-racing.

This review reads to me like just another version of liberal concern-trolling and privilege-policing whenever we’re talking about women’s experiences. I saw this on that thread at Tenured Radical a few weeks ago, when many commenters wanted only to talk about the “privilege” inherent in attending a women’s college, rather than the value of women’s-only education. Now, in one instance when there’s a big hollywood movie centered around a woman’s life (alongside a horse, of course), this d00d movie reviewer is all of a sudden concerned about the privilege she has as the heir to a horse farm. Funny how he missed all of the feminist points the filmmaker made when Chenery started spending more time away from her family–and the tension that caused in her marriage. I guess because she had one kind of privilege, it’s totally worthless to talk about the sexist assumptions she had to fight against, first in her family and then in the thoroughbred horse world in pursing the triple crown.

I’d love to see this guy’s review of The Social Network. Was it all about how white supremicist it was to set a movie at Harvard University? Did he complain about the representation of women only as sluts who don’t want to date Mark Zuckerberg? Does the filmmaker complain about how his invention of FaceBook really isn’t all that impressive because, after all, he grew up in privilege as the son of a dentist? My guess is that it doesn’t look like that at all.

How many people of color are in The Social Network? (I haven’t seen it, so I don’t know.) I’m totally on board with Hollywood never making another movie about a privileged white person again–but that means no more privileged d00ds, too, and somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.

By: KC

KC — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 00:14:57 +0000

Historiann,

Now that you’ve seen the movie, I’d be interested to get your reaction to Andrew O’Hehir’s review of it for Slate, where he writes, among other things, that the movie is “a work of creepy, half-hilarious master-race propaganda almost worthy of Leni Riefenstahl.”

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/secretariat/index.html?story=/ent/movies/andrew_ohehir/2010/10/06/secretariat