The radical notion that women like good movies
The trailer offers a kind of meta-advertisement, recognising the very marketing strategies that attracted people, including women, to the previous film. Cutting between clips of the men performing various routines, the trailer includes the line, “We didn’t want to show the best parts of the movie in this trailer but it was very very hard to resist,” before inviting the audience to #comeagain this summer.
With their soft voices and pigtails Paula and Carole had a purpose: they created a serene little oasis while sitting on swings and singing, calling kids to “come and see our garden grow.” In ‘The Magic Garden,’ there was a garden of make-believe where the “magic tree grows lollypop sticks.” Paula picked on her guitar and Carole encouraged you to stamp your feet or clap your hands on the “pop” during “Pop Goes the Weasel” without sounding like a droning fire alarm. Watching an episode of ‘The Magic Garden’ was like going to a music class—the women pushed kids to sing faster and faster with the speed of the music, harmonizing and smiling, their easy melody a break of sorts to all of the outside noise.
Check out all of the posts from our Female Gaze Theme Week here.
The desire to show a complex version of yourself seen with male characters in the Male Gaze, alongside a desire for a complex version of your partner seen with male recipients of desire in the Female Gaze, combines in the Queer Female Gaze to produce sexual and romantic relationships often rooted in friendship.
Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!
We all know that women simply are not put on screen as much as men are. This is partially due to the fact that there are fewer women creating films than men and partially due to the beloved foreign sales model in the film industry that seems to reflect that men create more of a return at the box office. I have been on calls with producers where we could make the overall budget of a film lower if we cast a woman instead of a man because simply, we didn’t have to pay her as much.
The other element worth noting in today’s films is what women are given when we finally make it to the silver screen. 28.8% of women on screen wear sexually revealing clothes as opposed to 7% of male characters. 26.2% get partially naked as opposed to 9.4% of men. These numbers all but continue to increase.
Too often, sex work and sex workers on screen aren’t represented three-dimensionally. Media representation is a mirror to our own cultural attitudes and norms, and we’d like to use this theme week to explore and analyze the good, the bad, and the dangerous of representations of sex workers in film and television.
# 50/50 5 Broken Cameras 500 Days of Summer 45 Years The 40-Year-Old Virgin 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days 9 to 5 1971 101 Dalmations 127 Hours 10 Days in a Madhouse 10,000 km 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets 300: Rise of an Empire 12 Years a Slave 28 Days Later A Abuse … Continue reading “Film Directory”
Seth MacFarlane, unpleasant person and recently-announced host of the 85th Annual Academy Awards Seth MacFarlane has been tapped to host the 85th Annual Academy Awards next February. MacFarlane is the creator of The Family Guy and several other animated television programs (American Dad, The Cleveland Show) known for their blatant hostility toward women, people of … Continue reading “Oscar Hosts Preferable to Seth MacFarlane: An Abbreviated List”
The Significance of Bridesmaids and Magic Mike in a Sea of Masculinity Not this. In Christopher Hitchens’s infamous essay, “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” he points to a Stanford study that rated men and women’s reactions to cartoons on a “funniness” scale. The study found many similarities between men and women’s responses, but also found some marked differences. … Continue reading “Summer Blockbusters Prove Women (Not Surprisingly) Enjoy Laughing and Gawking from Their Own Perspective”
Stephanie‘s Picks: Must We Worry About the Boys of ‘Brave’? by KJ Dell’antonia via the New York Times Why I Heart GIRLS & Lena Dunham’s Body via Virginia Sole-Smith TV Trailer Watch: Steel Magnolias via Women and Hollywood Nora Ephron, Prolific Author and Screenwriter, Dies at Age 71 by Adam Bernstein via the Washington Post … Continue reading “Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks”
Amber‘s Picks: Hillary’s Hair: More Newsworthy Than the Summit of the Americas? by Jenn Pozner for WIMN’s Voices People on the Internet Can Be Hella Racist by Issa for xo Jane We Heart: Funny or Die Counsels Rick Santorum on “Aborting” His Campaign by Lauren Barbato for Ms. Why Everyone Is Losing Their Shit Over the … Continue reading “Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks”
