What did we learn about taking the internet's advice, mm?

[trinityvixen]

A while ago, I let Netflix recommend something to me, added it to my queue, and when I was reorganzing the queue to space out movies and TV shows, I moved this movie up towards the top. I don't remember the name of it because I turned it off ten minutes into the thing. I think the Jimmy Olsen from Superman Returns was in it, and I know that Heather Mattarazzo was, too. It was supposed to be a rom-com, I suppose, given that the premise was the guy pretending to be gay in order to be friends with the girl. I know, Shakespeare, right? (Well, actually, kinda?) Long story short, it wasn't done cutesy, it was done raunchy, and I'd had enough of bimbos, boobs, and banging before it even started. I chucked it back in the mail and made sure to leave a scathing 1-star rating on it.

Coincidentally, at the same time, there was a thread at Pandagon about feminist-friendly romantic comedies, and after my bad luck with the aforementioned romp-com, I added a few titles to my queue. Someone recommended Coming Soon, which I watched last night. Ostensibly, this is female-empowered by dint of the three heroines all seeking the elusive orgasm that none have achieved despite all their sleeping around. To the film's credit, the fact that they have sex with people they don't like and aren't aroused by is not presented as slutty so much as curious and hormonal. The lead girl (ugh, her name is Stream, so guess what stereotype her mother plays?) doesn't care about romance or sex so much as pleasure. Which, hey, that's kinda cool. This consequence-free pursuit of sexual satisfaction should be great, right?

Well, no one ever asks a rhetorical question like that intending anyone to say "yes," so you've probably guessed that this is not the case. Part of the problem of romantic comedies--the problem, in fact--is that the women in them are never fully realized characters. Whenever they come close to being independent characters, they are then siphoned off into different stereotypical characters. They have a recognizable type--the business woman who never slowed down for love, the hopeless romantic, etc. etc.--because the film doesn't have time for them to have personalities. There's romance to be had!

So I guess I can't be too mad that the three girls, starting with the lead are just the push-over, the lesbian, and the bitch. The point is not that women have lives, the point is that all women want orgasms. And women have to flounce through a half-dozen unsatisfying situations until they realize what works to produce them. Actual agency, like, say, mentioning that you didn't have an orgasm and would like one is too much for them; they have to just trial-and-error it without giving any of their partners any hints that something is wrong. Stream just lets her "boyfriend" (aka guy who shows up, asks for sex, gets it, and leaves her hanging) use her body until she's finally so stoned on E that she lets slip that she hasn't had an orgasm with him. (Or ever.) Then he gallantly offers to make it up to her. And fails, but, you know, at least he tried to respond to her body's needs, which is more than she does.

At one point, the Bitch, discussing Stream with her therapist, says she's sure Stream has never had any orgasm. The therapist, bless him, goes, "Not even by masturbating?" To which the Bitch goes, "GAW-AWD, it's not like she's SOME DESPERATE LOSER." I know she's the Bitch character, and we're supposed to think what she says is ridiculous, but come on. She is never vilified, she never gets any comeuppance (how could she from Casper Milktoast Stream or I'm-gay-and-conflicted-so-I'm-going-to-try-and-OD Lesbian?), so her words aren't lies as far as the story goes. Stream does, in fact, have an orgasm via masturbation, which leads her to dump the asshole boyfriend. But masturbation is never revisited; Stream just goes on a series of humiliating outings with "sure thing" types who'll try and fail to get her off.

All so that she can come back to the sweet, funny kid who has been eyeballing her and making safe overtures of romance at her. (She asked him to kiss her when they were rolling around on the ground--a pretty standard method of getting the romance jump-started--and he didn't because he was nervous.) At this point, despite how cute Stream and Boy of her Sexual Satisfaction Dreams are in the two minutes they spend together, she has spent most of the movie in pursuit of random, meaningless hookups. So even though it's really great that they make an effort to show Stream's face as she has an orgasm with her ideal partner (and Learns A Valuable Lesson about how liking a guy is essential to having a good orgasm--HELLO, IT IS NOT), the lesson here is that unless it's with a dude, your orgasm means nothing. (This is emphasized by the fact that the Lesbian meets another Lesbian, has sex with her and gets her first orgasm, and the entire thing takes place off-screen save for the first kiss.)

This movie is a mess. It allows women to pursue orgasms without taint of slutitude, and it has more than one guy being sweet and pursuing romance instead of just sex. That's a plus. Women don't have any opinion on orgasm or sex that they share with their partners, they just hide their non-orgasm by saying nothing or, in the Bitch's case, overacting so her partner feels better. That's a definite minus. Any confrontation is defused by someone just letting the matter drop--mom doesn't punish daughter for sneaking out; Stream just drops the boyfriend and never really has it out with him over his, you know, lying to her when she was stoned about the orgasm he gave her that she totally didn't have. Then everything is tied off when the right couple get together and the guy gives her an orgasm. Forget that he's sweet on a cipher with zero personality who will, in return for his effort, give him zero feedback. THIS IS LOVE. WHICH WAS THE POINT ALL ALONG. TAKE THAT, DISAFFECTED YOUTH!

Why is it so hard to believe that women can have both emotional response and sexual ones, and that the two might not always have anything to do with each other? Or that they do have something to do with each other and are more intricately entwined than is commonly assumed? One is not a romantic who exchanges sex for love no more than one is automatically a slut if one exchanges sex for pleasure. We like sex. We like love. Sometimes both at once, sometimes one and not the other. It must be an astonishing thing for these writers that women? Get the equivalent of hard-ons for men they have no intention of ever loving. (Fucking, yes; lovng, no.) They objectify as much as men do (and some studies say more than men do). Their capactiy for romance is not inherently greater. Men suffer as much for these films as women because they are constantly cast as conquerors of female bodies, as manly man types with about as much reciprocal depth as is brought to them by their female counterparts. But just because one film allows guys to men and not just dudes does not make it a feminist-friendly movie. The women are allowed to be aggressive but not to have any other defining characteristics? Pssh, please.

This movie reminded me vaguely of Zerophilia, which I watched a couple of years ago. I had similar problems with tone, specifically the glossing over of non-traditional sexual desires in pursuit of romance. That film couldn't decide if it was a comedy or a serious film. Coming Soon couldn't decide how to feel about just ending on its heroine having a fucking orgasm, so they threw in some stuff about love. And lesbians. Like you do.

Mostly, it was goddamned distracting for the PEOPLE in it. The movie was made in 2000, but everyone sported early 90s hair, the sorts that most of them would have been wearing to middle school when they were in style. It's as if they never changed it even as they grew up. We're talking the Peter Petrelli emo-bangs hair. One guy had his slightly longer and kept it back with a thin headband. These are dated looks for 2000, let alone 2008. Then throw in the fact that douche-haired kid was Sean Spencer from Psych and headband-boy was Ryan Reynolds (coincidence! I swear!) and Ashton Kutcher was in there at one point, and that's enough now-famous, then-unknown boys to make my head spin. It's very telling about the compelling story of the three women at the center of the movie that not-a-one of them went on to even half-so-much fame as the least famous of those guys. Yeesh.

Comments

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

To be fair, everyone is marginalized in movies. Last time I checked I wasn't the slightly overweight but sensitive goofy guy who feels like his life is in a rut and needs a spirited girl with a sense of spontaneity to shake me out of it.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I find that "Yeah, well, I'm not in a movie either" logic to be complete bullshit. That's not an excuse to accept the status quo, dude.

Hollywood is a dream/fantasy factory. We want to see people better and worse than ourselves doing shit--and we'd prefer if those people were attractive. You'll note that attractiveness in the physical sense is not my problem with the specific movie I've picked out here. What is my problem is that the characters are not people. I'm not talking about "marginalized" people like pointing out how Hollywood films are populated with white males--although that is a problem. I'm talking about the characters in the film, ostensibly right at the center, being ciphers instead of people.

How many There Will Be Blood-types of character studies do women get? Almost none. They get archetypes, not character studies. To say women are "marginalized" in film is to imply they're there but on the side. What I'm saying is the opposite--they're front and center and still completely invisible. In some genres, you can have a cipher standing in for the audience. But this flattening of women is almost universal across genres.

Even in films starring female characters, the bias is male--in the way they're written, in the resolutions to their purported desires. So either those women are written without regards to how women behave (dudes in wigs) or are written as men assume women behave, which is far worse because the assumptions reveal a lot about how far yet we have to come as regards sexism.

What I'm driving at is that if this were a movie about an awkward, uncommunicative guy who never got laid, he'd be able to balance romance and sex. Basically, the movie I just described was The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and I doubt you'd argue that Steve Carell wasn't a fully realized person within that movie, who was allowed to have desires and frustrations and still want a human connection beyond himself without being dependent upon it. Where is the female version of that character?

[droidguy1119.livejournal.com]

Well, my point was not to accept it just because it's common. My point was just that, while women get the shorter end of the stick, everyone gets reduced in films, especially romantic comedies, since the audience for romantic comedies is generally looking for the same ending. When the same X marks the spot in every movie, you can take as many detours as you want to get there, but everyone still knows where things are going to end up.

Ironically, I think Catherine Keener's character in The 40-Year-Old Virgin is fully realized. I can't say the same for Katherine Heigl's character in Knocked Up and things get progressively worse as you track newer and newer Apatow movies.

The bigger problem is that everyone wants to work and people on both sides of the equation have low standards. It's sad to think that Kate Hudson was actually a producer on a movie like Bride Wars, but I guess it pays the bills.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

1) Having a need for the "same" (i.e. happy) ending does not preclude smart, fully realized male and female characters. See: Say Anything...

2) Catherine Keener was no Manic Pixie Dream Girl, that's true. She was allowed to be sexual by dint of being a a mother (thus an proven sexual creature). But she's the only one in the movie. The rest of the female characters are floozies and bimbos because the himbos in the movie couldn't possibly handle a person for a mate.

3) Yeah, I got nothing. I'm just depressed.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Seems Americans can't help but slide from sex-praising to porn. We don't get happy or realistic sexuality, we get a good start (at best) and then erotica (at best). I'm trying to think of any recent US film that had a playful but sober portrayal of sex without falling into sap territory and I can't do it. There's been some very real sex with violence or consequences (Unfaithful, History of Violence, & Brokeback come to mind), but everything else seems like sap-com or male conquest. Maybe Mr. & Mrs. Smith, if only b/c it was pure mindless eye candy and anyone who saw it knew the two of them were all over each other (and they were dripping with it the whole time)... even then all we get is a guilty pleasure. Good thing there's foreign film to bring us Happy Go Lucky.

America is ridiculous! Hollywood is double-plus ridiculous!! How can we stop it? I'll be damned if I know. I just gave up on the whole thing and live in my own space. I have a feeling more and more people are doing the same, leaving less and less of our lives to be collectively influenced by mass-media. Hopefully these smaller, looser groups will lead to a bit more honesty and open people up to the idea of individualism that's supposed to be The American Way. My bet is that the younger generation is so oversaturated with sex that they won't care nearly as much and so it'll be a less effective marketing tool. Hooray for capitalism!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

One film I enjoyed about sex recently was Shortbus. Now, it's definitely erotica as it features actors engaging in real sex, but I'd say it's the opposite of porn because the idea isn't to get you off but to make you think, to make you consider how each character you meet has a different problem. The woman at the heart of that film was in a similar situation as the girl in this one: she'd never had an orgasm. Because she's thirty-something and married--and a sex therapist to boot--that plays a lot sadder. All the people in the movie have hangups and you see them watching other people, even some of the other characters, with such jealousy and then you find out that those other characters have just as many problems. The lesson becomes that in the crushing pressure to be normal and happy and okay to everyone else, we're often disappointing and depressing ourselves in private. Sexual dysfunction is just the symptom, not the disease. I really liked that.

The younger generation is saturated with sex, in a way that divorces them from the consequences of it--in all senses of the word. They are told to be sexy but forbidden from having sex (or even being taught how to protect themselves if they fall off the abstinence wagon). So they might just assume, as pop culture tells them, that sex is a throw-away thing. That's not what the sexual revolution was supposed to be about. It was supposed to be about not feeling ashamed of your biological urges, not about chucking yourself at anything that moves. There are serious emotional considerations, issues of maturity to consider, and I don't think the younger generations, with the conflicting idols of Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus, are getting a good explanation in there. No one is telling them anything but everyone is shouting at them. Maybe they can block that out. Maybe they'll just go crazy.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Yet another film I meant to see but didn't. Sounds just like the kind of movie our culture could use, and also the kind that's considered extremely shocking and not given much release. Have you seen "This Film Is Not Yet Rated"? Great look into the film rating process.

Back to Shortbus, I liked Brokeback Mountain for a similar reason - their relationship followed a lot of the patterns that any heterosexual relationship could. Being gay didn't make love different, it just made it harder for them. The same basic needs and fears are part of everyone, and that came across so brilliantly.

Kids are probably smarter than either of us realizes when it comes to sex. The internet has made so much information (and terrible porn) available that it's less of a secret. I know I've seen a growing openness about sex, a certain honest acceptance. Even if they're not always getting the right advice, and even though there are terribly mixed messages out there, I think that explicitness is a big step. If everyone recognizes sex's presence then it's harder for society to be in denial about what it is and what it means.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

As a matter of fact, I loved This Film Is Not Yet Rated (http://trinityvixen.livejournal.com/332609.html). It confirmed my worst complaints (and fears) about the ratings process. (And made some worse--like when the film was copied wtf?) I don't think Shortbus made it out of the cities as a film, and to be fair, it almost uniformly used alternative sexualities as the solutions to the problems the people are facing, and that's just not the reality for most people. With the way I've parsed Coming Soon, that would suggest that Shortbus advocates alternative sexuality as the means to solve personal dissatisfaction. I don't think it did, but you could argue that. And that doesn't play well with a lot of people even before you get the graphic stuff in there.

And I need to see Brokeback. It's just one that I have to find a mood for, you know? I want to like it and be as impressed with it as people with good taste I know have been. I'll get there.

Sex being made less taboo a subject will help immeasurably. The aura of naughtiness is just not conducive to honesty. It's already an awkward, intimate sort of level to get to with another person under the best of circumstances, but keeping it under covers doesn't help either.