Media what I have consumed lately
Dec. 31st, 2013 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficClueless
Still fluff, still hella entertaining. This may be the only time I actually like Paul Rudd in something. What I appreciate about it is that, like its source material, the main character is a shallow ditz. But she also manages to be incredibly sweet and endearing, even though she never evolves past her own little spoiled bubble of privilege. I also kind of admire them for adapting this to the modern era without getting rid of any of the vaguely incestuous, enormous age difference creepiness.
She's All That
My god, this movie is atrocious. I read a fanfic AU vaguely based on it some time ago and added it to my Netflix cue, and as it's expiring on January 1, decided to watch it. I can barely express how wretched it is.
It's terrible just on the level of, you know, writing and character and plot. It doesn't manage any of that well. It's a series of formulaic, heartless, boring set pieces that try to trick you into thinking these characters feel any emotion towards each other.
But what takes it from conventional bad to appalling is relentless misogyny. The women in this film have no agency. None of them. The heroine is lifted from obscurity to popularity by the hero; her own potential as an artist is only unlocked by him. The other women are all defined by their role as girlfriends to the other boys. They only pay attention to the heroine when their boyfriends do. And the only impetus for any of the men to pay attention to the heroine is their competition with each other. Nothing that happens happens because of any decisions the women make. It's all orchestrated by men. Including multiple incidents of not only stalking, but all the men in the heroine's life (including her brother and father) conspiring to make sure she gets together with the hero, even after she repeatedly says no.
The real kicker is the climax of the movie, in which hero's best friend has gotten jealous of him and resolved to bang the heroine to prove a point. Heroine's best friend (a man, of course), overhears this guy bragging about how he's going to sleep with her. At this point, what does he do? He runs to the hero to tell him. Not his friend. Repeat: When he hears that a guy intends to rape his best friend, rather than warning her, or even locating her, or preventing her from leaving with that guy, he goes and finds another guy--a guy that the heroine has rejected--and tells him about it. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Heathers
I had never seen this before and am having a bit of a hard time processing it. Mainly because I'd always been told it was a comedy, and it has arch elements that imply it is a comedy, but it really, really isn't.
Maybe it doesn't read as a comedy to me because of the number of school shootings that have happened in the intervening years since it was made. Maybe it read as a comedy in 1989. But to me, it really seems more like an exploration of how a school shooter winds up on that path.
I mean, even Veronica, our hero, only rejects the method of killing bullies because it doesn't get rid of the problem. That seems to be her main issue: killing a bully doesn't make it stop. Someone else just rises into that position. Her objection is not that she has taken a life. And her guilt in the three deaths is very muddy--intentionally so. I felt a real disconnect between her and her humanity, even though, at the end, she does the "right" thing.
What it ended up making a point of to me, is how willing we are to buy into interpretations of events that fit our preconceived notions of how these sorts of stories go. They get away with it because they create a familiar story out of the deaths. Even so they do so clumsily, no one looks further.
I don't know. The whole thing left me feeling icky. I absolutely respect the intelligence of this movie. I could totally see studying it in a media studies class. But I don't think I'll be rewatching it ever.
Still fluff, still hella entertaining. This may be the only time I actually like Paul Rudd in something. What I appreciate about it is that, like its source material, the main character is a shallow ditz. But she also manages to be incredibly sweet and endearing, even though she never evolves past her own little spoiled bubble of privilege. I also kind of admire them for adapting this to the modern era without getting rid of any of the vaguely incestuous, enormous age difference creepiness.
She's All That
My god, this movie is atrocious. I read a fanfic AU vaguely based on it some time ago and added it to my Netflix cue, and as it's expiring on January 1, decided to watch it. I can barely express how wretched it is.
It's terrible just on the level of, you know, writing and character and plot. It doesn't manage any of that well. It's a series of formulaic, heartless, boring set pieces that try to trick you into thinking these characters feel any emotion towards each other.
But what takes it from conventional bad to appalling is relentless misogyny. The women in this film have no agency. None of them. The heroine is lifted from obscurity to popularity by the hero; her own potential as an artist is only unlocked by him. The other women are all defined by their role as girlfriends to the other boys. They only pay attention to the heroine when their boyfriends do. And the only impetus for any of the men to pay attention to the heroine is their competition with each other. Nothing that happens happens because of any decisions the women make. It's all orchestrated by men. Including multiple incidents of not only stalking, but all the men in the heroine's life (including her brother and father) conspiring to make sure she gets together with the hero, even after she repeatedly says no.
The real kicker is the climax of the movie, in which hero's best friend has gotten jealous of him and resolved to bang the heroine to prove a point. Heroine's best friend (a man, of course), overhears this guy bragging about how he's going to sleep with her. At this point, what does he do? He runs to the hero to tell him. Not his friend. Repeat: When he hears that a guy intends to rape his best friend, rather than warning her, or even locating her, or preventing her from leaving with that guy, he goes and finds another guy--a guy that the heroine has rejected--and tells him about it. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Heathers
I had never seen this before and am having a bit of a hard time processing it. Mainly because I'd always been told it was a comedy, and it has arch elements that imply it is a comedy, but it really, really isn't.
Maybe it doesn't read as a comedy to me because of the number of school shootings that have happened in the intervening years since it was made. Maybe it read as a comedy in 1989. But to me, it really seems more like an exploration of how a school shooter winds up on that path.
I mean, even Veronica, our hero, only rejects the method of killing bullies because it doesn't get rid of the problem. That seems to be her main issue: killing a bully doesn't make it stop. Someone else just rises into that position. Her objection is not that she has taken a life. And her guilt in the three deaths is very muddy--intentionally so. I felt a real disconnect between her and her humanity, even though, at the end, she does the "right" thing.
What it ended up making a point of to me, is how willing we are to buy into interpretations of events that fit our preconceived notions of how these sorts of stories go. They get away with it because they create a familiar story out of the deaths. Even so they do so clumsily, no one looks further.
I don't know. The whole thing left me feeling icky. I absolutely respect the intelligence of this movie. I could totally see studying it in a media studies class. But I don't think I'll be rewatching it ever.