christine whatev (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} superhyphy) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} ohnotheydidnt,@ 2008-03-21 14:04:00 |
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Radar rounds up the decade's most misogynistic movies, by Amy Monaghan
IRONY A scene from Mona Lisa Smile, which, like the rest of these movies, is an affront to womankind
Calling pretty much any Hollywood movie "a little sexist" (as Katherine Heigl did when Vanity Fair asked her about her star-making turn in last summer's Knocked Up) is like saying you're a little bit pregnant. The difference is one of degree, not kind.
Now that the Oscars are over and our first viable female presidential is floundering toward failure, it seems like a good time to take stock of sexism in our culture. That's why Radar, using Knocked Up as a mildly chauvinistic baseline, and employing the highly scientific method of surveying our girlfriends, set out to uncover the most misogynistic movies of the 21st century. (Excluded were intentionally offensive movies and any grindhouse film where coeds ended up in a woodchipper, etc.)
It's a crowded field, and getting more so daily (we're looking at you, Teeth), but here's our year-by-year timeline of the most woman-bashing films of the Oughts. So far.
2007
Superbad
Like Whitney Houston, we believe the children are our future, which is why the sexual politics of Judd Apatow's adolescent romp left us so depressed. Listen, dick-obsessed Seth is not cute. His cluelessness is not charming. He's a cretin. And the worst kind of cretin: a cretin who is afraid of vaginas. Granted, you're not gonna get an argument from us that menstrual blood can be icky, boys, but we have news for you: If you wanna do the crime, you're gonna have to do the time.
Runners-up
Hostel: Part II: Thanks, Eli Roth, for giving us naked Heather Matarazzo strung up by an evil woman who slits her captive's throat and then rubs the blood on her tits. Sisterhood is powerful.
Ocean's Thirteen: Foxy Ellen Barkin is reduced to playing a loopy cougar. Surely she got enough cash from Ron Perelman in the divorce to pass up this part.
Shoot 'Em Up: All you need to know: Monica Belluci plays a lactating hooker.
2006
The Devil Wears Prada
Surprise: It's not Meryl Streep's surly career woman that makes this flick sexist. Her we like. But queeny Stanley Tucci telling mousy Anne Hathaway, "Wake up, Six!" was the quip that launched a thousand fingers down girls' throats. And if we had to read one more thoughtful male critic's sensitive observations regarding one-dimensional bitchy bosses on film, we might start purging. Straight down their throats, right after we cut off their heads.
Runners-up
The Holiday: Repeat offender Nancy Meyer directed this flick that asks us to believe that Kate Winslet would end up with Jack Black just because she's not as skinny as Cameron Diaz.
John Tucker Must Die: Three bitchy teen girls humiliate the boy who broke their hearts by feeding him estrogen and making him wear panties.
My Super Ex-Girlfriend: "G-Girl" Uma Thurman uses her superpowers to be extra neurotic and clingy. Emasculated BF Luke Wilson dumps her. Crazy-bitch hilarity ensues.
The Breakup: Jennifer Aniston is a nagging, neurotic feminist nightmare. And she used an ass double.
2005
Sin City
Two-dimensional curvy broads in artsy black and white play strippers, hookers, and waitresses who get beaten, raped, and beheaded. So the prostitutes run the safest hood in Sin City. So what? Even in a comic-book movie the women are stuck servicing and "civilizing" the men. And again: beaten, raped, beheaded.
Runners-up
Hustle & Flow: It's hard out there for a pimp, my ass. Craig Brewer's "pimps up, hos down" fantasia asks us to buy not one, not two, but three hookers with hearts of gold, all eager to help their pimp Djay realize his hip-hop pipe dreams.
Wedding Crashers: Lovable scamps Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson troll wedding receptions for drunk bridesmaids every weekend, until their bromance is threatened by true love. Oh, and a raging nympho played by Isla Fisher. Some date movie.
2004
13 Going on 30
According to the "female Big," here are your choices: You can be a duplicitous bitch on wheels with a high-powered job in publishing who takes a car service everywhere, has a closet full of couture, and lives alone in a great apartment in a doorman building in Manhattan. Or you can stay true to your dork self and marry the boy next door and evince no outward evidence of any career ambitions whatsoever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the "Thriller" dance scene. Whatever. The "happy ending" comes when Jennifer Garner's character dumps her career for love, marriage, and a pink house. In suburban New Jersey. Talk about settling. Has no one heard of the PATH train?
Runners-up
Spanglish: James L. Brooks, alleged sensitive-guy director, gives us maternal monster Téa Leoni. A high-powered career woman who goes off the rails once she loses her job, she channels her energy into telling her preteen daughter that she's fat and criticizing her husband. Audiences are supposed to cheer when the schlubby chef, played by Adam Sandler, falls for foxy Mexican maid Flor instead.
She Hate Me: Spike Lee asks us to believe that a bunch of well-heeled lesbians would pay $10,000 to be impregnated the old-fashioned way and get off on it.
2003
Mona Lisa Smile
We know what you're thinking: a misogynistic Julia Roberts movie? Get out! It's not like she rose to fame by playing a leggy hooker or won an Oscar for wearing a push-up bra. Here the pretty woman pretends to be a protofeminist, playing a boho professor at a 1950s women's college who allegedly empowers her underwritten, stereotypical students: the brain, the slut, the snob, and the fatty. Mona Lisa Smile's takeaway lesson? You can't have it all; feminism lied. Sorry.
Runner-up
Brown Bunny: It's not just because Chloë Sevigny gave Vincent Gallo a very real blowjob. Okay, actually it is.
2002
Sweet Home Alabama
Reese Witherspoon cravenly takes her southern belle with brass balls persona to the bank in yet another punish-the-career-woman movie. Uppity New York–based fashion designer Melanie needs to be taken down a notch before she marries up. So we're supposed to cheer as her frustrated not-quite-ex back home in the holler clouts her around until she loses her airs.
Bickering with the trailer-trash guy you left behind is much sexier and more authentic than abandoning a Tiffany engagement ring offered by the mayor of New York's son, y'all. Now go back to your hometown, slip off your shoes, and get a little pregnant.
2001
Bridget Jones's Diary
Texan Renée Zellweger adopts a British accent and gains 20 whole pounds to play a whinging, boozy neurotic who's addicted to self-help books. She's just like you! Or at least she's exactly what Hollywood thinks you're like: frumpy, insecure, man-hungry, and completely incapable of self-discipline!
Our course, our fragile Cinderella stand-in sleeps with her creepy, chubby-chasing boss, suffers pratfalls and humiliations galore, and ends up with a boring barrister as her Prince Charming, who—say it with us now—loves Bridget just the way she is. (If you'd like to know "the way she is" without watching the film, reference any Cathy comic strip from the mid '90s.) Blech.
2000
What Women Want
According to director Nancy Meyer's condescending comedy, what women want is Mel "Sugar Tits" Gibson to have the ability to read their minds, apparently. After a freak accident, Gibson's womanizer can do just that. He uses his newfound power to steal a female coworker's ideas.
And, naturally, she forgives him and they fall in love.
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