AO Scott gets his feminist bona fides on in the NYT:
Oddly, being a father, which is, technically, the result of heterosexual you-know-what and therefore, symbolically, proof of manhood, is looked at in movies as a state of emasculation. Becoming a husband and father turns a man into a baby or a woman, removed from the company of men by diaper duty and other antisexual domestic chores. Unless or until mommy takes off, either to a (usually off-screen) new man or the grave. Single dads seem to outnumber single moms in the movies (the reverse of real life), and widowers in particular are potent sources of pathos and sex appeal. A man rearing children in partnership with a woman is barely a man at all, but a man raising kids by himself is perfect.
I forget sometimes that as much as all the bro cinema is annoying, as a feminist, as a woman, though I have enjoyed some Apatow in my time (though not without some WTF-ing reservations), it is surely annoying to be a man and suffer through it. The argument with cinema seriously, though, is similar to one people make with music–“it’s only music”–it’s only entertainment, meaning we shouldn’t expect anything beyond 90 mins of stupidifying, lobotomizing, ‘splosions and single entendres. But you can’t divorce a culture’s entertainment from the same symptoms and mores of the culture itself. AO Scott, here, raging for some liberation for the Iron Johns who want some reasonable modeling of men on film, not superheroic, magical boys or clad in Madea-fat-suits.
Urban Honking
is a community of writers, visual artists, musicians, filmmakers, and other great humans.
-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- Ablehanded Farthinghamster on MITT
- Rebecca on Quick Bits On Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet Or Saw And Have No Further Thoughts On
- Kevin Erickson on MITT
- Eileen on Quick Bits On Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet Or Saw And Have No Further Thoughts On
- Yours Truly on Gravity
Archives
- February 2014
- January 2014
- October 2013
- June 2013
- February 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- January 2011
- July 2010
- June 2010
- January 2010
- November 2007
- June 2006
- May 2006
Categories
Meta
Your link is broken. It has an extra http in it.