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Thank you, Kate Harding. When I first read about 28-year-old Nick Waters’ little feat — watching a month’s worth of chick flicks in order to better understand women — over at Jezebel, I had the very same thought: What makes you think these movies will help you get inside gals’ noggins? It’s not like we’re generally the ones making them. In fact, some recent evidence would suggest we’re less and less interested in seeing them.
Now, I’m not suggesting a man can’t successfully create a female character (omg, have you read/seen Shopgirl?) and vice versa — I believe certain writers and directors absolutely excel at it. Just not everybody, and statistically, in film, men have the opportunity to try far more often than women seem to.
To Waters credit, 11 of the 30 films he chose were directed by women (and two of his favorites were two of my favorites from last year, directed AND written by women: Jane Campion’s Bright Star and Drew Barrymore’s Whip It.)However, it shouldn’t be overlooked, either, that even the lady-directed films Waters’ watched provide a rather limited view of womanity:
… Ruba Nadda (“Cairo Time”) and Gina Prince-Bythewood (“The Secret Life of Bees”) are the only female directors of color who made it onto Waters’ list (which, depressingly, is also not a bad number relative to the options).
[The rest are by white women, and the films follow] mostly young, conventionally beautiful, underemployed but expensively dressed single straight gals who desperately want to get marri — eh, you know. You’ve seen chick flicks. You’ve read rants about their tropes and their shallowness and their appalling portrayal of female ambition and about how many of them, despite ostensibly being for and about women, still flunk the Bechdel Test.
With the exception of a few faves, Harding thinks Waters is “better off forgetting everything he’s learned” about women from his experiment. What do you think? And, on a less important note, do you think Couples Retreat really qualifies as a chick flick? I saw it tonight and my answer is hell-to the-no. I’m wishing for Eternal Sunshine-style memory erasure here.
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Awww he’s trying to learn, let him be…
I love Shopgirl.
I generally don’t care for “chick flicks”. I find most of them to be asinine (but this is coming from a diehard martial arts film lover, so take that as you will).
However, I do really like Chocolat. And Waitress, but I don’t know that that one really counts.
“Whip It” is far from a chick flick. It happens to be written by, directed by, and star women, but it’s a combo sports/coming of age tale.
You are right it is a coming of age film about….a chick. So why can’t it be a chick flick again?
Kinda off topic, but Bradley Cooper gives me the skeevies. I can’t stand him and find him as appealing as week old pimento loaf.
I hate Couples Retreat on the basis that the men are all old, fat or ugly and all the chicks are hot, and some way too young for the guys they’re with.
Seriously, are we supposed to believe Kristen Bell and Jason Bateman as a couple?
oh.my.god. Thank you, fellow human being who notices the sexy females and their “I-personally-wouldn’t-screw-them-if-you-paid-me” gross, rude, overweight, insensitive, chauvinistic yet supposedly adorable male counterparts in all of its ridiculousness!!!
Sorry, that has bothered me for quite some time.
Yeah. It pisses me off too. The only movies that feature an overweight woman with a hot guy are about how great the hot guy is for being with an overweight chick.
When it’s a hot chick with a fat/old/ugly guy, it’s a total non issue.
And I just saw that craptacular movie miss march (about the coma and the playboy bunny girlfriend and whatnot because I really had nothing else to do last night). God. Why do movies ALWAYS have absolutely clueless, stupid, asshole, insensitive douchebag guys who treat their girlfriends like shit? Why do these girls either take it or, after storming off angrily, go back to the aforementioned douchebag after he makes a fluffy “heartfelt” apology to flowery music and says she’s pretty WITHOUT EVER CHANGING HIS BEHAVIOR?!
Sorry, that kind of stuff really pisses me off. Damn, I even threw in some caps lock. Must be some internalized anger.
Admittedly, that movie is not a chick flick.
I love chick flicks. All of them. Every one. Except ‘the wedding planner’.
[...] Nick’s story is how pathetic and idiotic it is for a man to do what Nick did. The author of zeldaily.com seems to suggest that Nick really wasn’t trying to better understand his wife. A comment on [...]
Sadly, I think chick flicks really will help a guy understand many women. This is not out of my high regard for chick flicks, but my low regard for the average woman.
I have to agree with you on this one. So many of my female friends approach their lives as though they’re in Confessions of a Shopaholic or Bride Wars or even Clueless (which I adore). It’s irrational.
Ok, so maybe I am a shallow freak, but I usually totally relate to chicks in chick flicks.
As far as I am concerned, my life has been one big chick flick, and now that I have been happily ever aftered I am no longer ‘on screen’, but in some netherworld watching my friends try to find happiness.
Watching a chick flick triggers endorphins. endorphins make you happy. Happy people don’t kill their husbands.
(the eyes are the nipples of the face)
Some people do live their lives as portrayed in chick flicks. Some people would logically relate to the characters. People come in all different types.
I have yet to find a character in a chick flick I would even desire to spend time with, let alone relate to. I am thankful to be living a very very different life from that shown, and I hope desperately to never become more acquainted with that perspective.
I am glad that chick flicks trigger the happies for you. I tend to get the homicidal urges. A chick flick is not likely to make me a husband killer, but could endanger the next vapid woman I run across… :D
Actually, my favorite romantic comedies are by….Shakespeare. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is my favorite.
I’m such a nerdy English major….
[...] on “30 Days and 30 Chick Flicks“: “Kinda off topic, but Bradley Cooper gives me the skeevies. I can’t stand him and [...]
[...] Nick’s story is how pathetic and idiotic it is for a man to do what Nick did. The author of zeldaily.com seems to suggest that Nick really wasn’t trying to better understand his wife. A comment on [...]