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Cessna posted:This seems to be a VERY fine distinction. Oh, there have absolutely been strong feminist movies, going way way back early in the 20th century, and for all I know late in the 19th. We are in total agreement. (Do I get to claim His Girl Friday? Even though Cary Grant is constantly trying to manipulate Rosalind Russell and failing?) Here's what I originally said: Arsenic Lupin posted:It's not unusual for blockbusters to have "progressive" (whatever that means) views, but for a blockbuster to have in-your-face feminism? I don't remember the last time that happened. You may be able to cite a speech here, a speech there, but when was a blockbuster completely focused on the patriarchy and what it means and oh, yeah, good gags?
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Aug 2, 2023 00:30
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I liked it better than Oppenheimer
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Aug 2, 2023 00:38
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I stand by that. Characters in Barbie are consistently saying out loud, and not leaving you to infer it from the plot, that the patriarchy is bad and has bad effects on everybody. This is something I don't remember seeing before in blockbusters. I see women treated shabbily, perhaps saying they're treated shabbily because they're women, out loud, but I don't remember seeing a blockbuster that was entirely, explicitly focused on (a kind of) feminism. I have seen blockbusters where people monologued about justice, or patriotism, or were [the events of the movie] really worth it. I haven't seen a monologue about how much it sometimes sucks to be a woman. Would you consider Wonder Woman? I know Patty Jenkins fell out of favor with 1984, but Diana's encounters with social mores are pretty big indictments of how women are treated and failed by the patriarchy. The "you don't sleep with women" scene, where just lying down and sleeping next to someone of different sex implies intercourse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMtvZ6m05IE Diana trying on clothes that women are supposed to wear after heading to London https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuFSNbV3uZA Diana saving Steve while he assumes the role of "protector" and proceeding to kick the crap out of their attackers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhEr7I8oIho They aren't speeches, and maybe my point of view is too narrow since Barbie indicts what patriarchy does to all sexes and genders alike.
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Aug 2, 2023 00:41
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I'm genuinely fascinated by the idea that films about black women fighting back against oppression doesn't count as sufficiently feminist because it's too intertwined with the hyper-masculine black liberation movement or whatever. I'm a self admitted idiot that needs someone to explain how the Barbie movie is so much more feminist than Beauty Shop (2005).
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Aug 2, 2023 00:44
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KVeezy3 posted:I'm genuinely fascinated by the idea that films about black women fighting back against oppression doesn't count as sufficiently feminist because it's too intertwined with the hyper-masculine black liberation movement or whatever.
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Aug 2, 2023 01:18
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KVeezy3 posted:Will any woman always have the more truthful version of feminism than any man? To cite the Barbie movie's infatuation with the gender dynamics of the Supreme Court, where does Amy Coney Barrett fall along these lines? Issa Rae tried to pitch the contradictions of womanhood at her, but she just kept nodding and saying, "May it please the Lord." Rae went down a very long list.
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Aug 2, 2023 01:24
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Arsenic Lupin posted:What? I said nothing remotely like that. Ok. So how does Barbie better represent feminism than Hidden Figures?
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Aug 2, 2023 01:31
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Arsenic Lupin posted:What? I said nothing remotely like that. I don't think that was your intent, no, but I believe they're responding to this: Arsenic Lupin posted:Hidden Figures is about how much it sucks to be Black and a woman in our society. As if, the added complexity of Hidden Figures regarding Blackness in its feminism distracts from the purity of its feminist message, a "problem" Barbie does not have. I think the general idea KVeezy (and maybe SMG) are circling around here is that feminism is necessarily intersectional, and cannot actually be extricated from race or class or orientation, etc., so the argument that these other details are some extraneous interlocution that "misses the important bit" is actually privileging wealthy white femininity and doing a disservice to the topic. That Gloria's big speech is perhaps uniquely resonant to a white woman's perspective doesn't necessarily make the movie's focus more pure or direct, it just presupposes other forms of privilege (having access to wealth, having racial privilege or cis privilege, etc.) as unnecessary to address alongside gender. We can *just* talk about femininity and its specific contradictions. I don't want to drag Greta Gerwig too hard on this, because the movie has moments of self-awareness on this point (the narrator's note about Margot Robbie, etc.), but she *is* a white middle-class cis-woman. As is stereotypical Barbie, the anchor Barbie of the film.
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Aug 2, 2023 01:45
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Well I mean Hidden Figures created a white man whole cloth to do things the real life women did entirely on their own.
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Aug 2, 2023 01:47
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I haven't seen Hidden Figures, but I'm pretty sure both it and Barbie are trying to do very, very different things. Like, at a minimum, Hidden Figures is a film depicting the historical challenges faced by African-American women who were working for NASA in the early 1960s, whereas Barbie is a very pointed and direct commentary on feminism today's society.
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Aug 2, 2023 02:01
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Rarity posted:Thank you for mansplaining feminism You shouldn’t assume everyone who disagrees with you is a man.
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Aug 2, 2023 03:09
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Acebuckeye13 posted:I haven't seen Hidden Figures, but I'm pretty sure both it and Barbie are trying to do very, very different things. Like, at a minimum, Hidden Figures is a film depicting the historical challenges faced by African-American women who were working for NASA in the early 1960s, whereas Barbie is a very pointed and direct commentary on feminism today's society. There’s not really any value in debating which movie has more feminism points, which is sort of the problem with the original argument. Declaring Barbie the first (most? Most overtly? I’m not really sure) feminist blockbuster and then defining that in increasingly narrow terms doesn’t really help us understand Barbie in itself or intertextually. Even if you narrow that argument until it’s technically true what’s the value in novelty?
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Aug 2, 2023 03:21
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As pointed out earlier with the Starship Troopers reviews, even when there’s very obvious satire and social commentary in a movie that isn’t enough. Audiences of blockbuster movies don’t think that deeply so it really helps to be so blatantly direct and clear about the messages through dialog. You guys can point to movies with feminist themes or strong female roles or whatever but those films are still not as blatantly obvious and definitely don’t involve one of main characters discovering a book on patriarchy and using it to take over their world or having other very clear dialog that’s not abstracted in additional layers of story telling. Yall can point to a documentary on the history of feminist theory and you’re still completely missing the point. Barbie is very direct, unobstructed and forced audiences to hear the message instead of needing to decipher some archetypal analytics. Most people see a movie and don’t really think that deeply, and even Rodger Ebert a professional movie watcher didn’t seem to comprehend the VERY OBVIOUS SATIRICAL framing of Starship Troopers. Barbie is just built different. e: spoiler tag Computer Serf fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 03:37
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Xealot posted:I mean, dystopian fiction is literally always about the actual society that made it. I don't see why the word "patriarchy" needs to show up in Fury Road for it to be considered a searingly and overtly feminist commentary on real-world patriarchy. This is a film where the villain is a Mega Trump warlord with a private harem of child brides, a dairy farm of human women, and an army of teenage boys brainwashed by manosphere poo poo as religion. The inciting action is the female lead liberating the child brides after they paint slogans like "We are not things" all over the walls. It's hyperbolic, but so is the Mojo Dojo Casa House. Computer Serf posted:Barbie is very direct, unobstructed and forced audiences to hear the message instead of needing to decipher some archetypal analytics. Most people see a movie and don’t really think that deeply, and even Rodger Ebert a professional movie watcher didn’t seem to comprehend the VERY OBVIOUS SATIRICAL framing of Starship Troopers. Barbie is just built different.
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Aug 2, 2023 03:45
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Xealot posted:As if, the added complexity of Hidden Figures regarding Blackness in its feminism distracts from the purity of its feminist message, a "problem" Barbie does not have. I'm not saying that there aren't other feminist movies. I am saying that this particular movie did something different; essentially what Computer Serf said.
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Aug 2, 2023 03:49
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Arsenic Lupin posted:I am honestly baffled by this. I was responding to a list of movies. I said that two of them dealt with being women, and one dealt with being Black and a woman. I don't know what else I could have done; it would have been ghastly to refer to Hidden Figures only as it dealt with women. Again, I was responding to a list, and I was replying to that list. I did not in any way say or imply that Hidden Figures was lesser because the characters were both Black and women. Uh, so what's the feminist difference between a film that deals with women, and a film that deal with being black women?
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Aug 2, 2023 03:53
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KVeezy3 posted:Uh, so what's the feminist difference between a film that deals with women, and a film that deal with being black women?
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Aug 2, 2023 03:59
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Fury Road, for all its right on political satire and feminism, visually worked on massive car chases, chrome, a guy shredding guitar riffs hooked up to a truck, empowered female characters who also happen to be models who also happen to not be wearing very much. There is such a thing as gendered aesthetics. I’d say even Hidden Figures treads a ‘normal’ aesthetic line in the telling of the story and the setting of it that comes from a history of countless films about a minority character overcoming prejudice. That history of films is almost exclusively male in its tropes of story and feel. Colours, architecture, film grades, what have you, are gender coded. 70mm film is male coded. The Barbie movie starts in a colour saturated full physical set of actual Barbie houses and stays that blunt throughout. Whatever else, I can’t think of another massive blockbuster that’s done it that full on before.
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Aug 2, 2023 04:17
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KVeezy3 posted:Uh, so what's the feminist difference between a film that deals with women, and a film that deal with being black women?  Hidden figures is not a happy go lucky hyper pop summer blockbuster musical based on a globally recognizable toy icon where the main plot involves a character that sings about blonde fragility and discovers a book on patriarchy to then take over the world. It’s not just that the movie revolves around a feminist theme, it’s the combination of hyper pop hollywood with a message that’s unavoidably explicitly clearly defined, exaggerated and built on an established gigantic brand name character like Barbie. The combination of the ESTABLISHED POP BRAND with explicitly clear blatantly obvious character dialog is what makes a distinct recipe and differentiates Barbie from other feminist themed movies that lack the clarity and Brand recognition that pulls in wider audiences. Yes other feminist films exist like Hidden Figures, the Alien franchise, Mad Max Fury Road, Princess Mononoke, Daisies, The Misandrists or documentaries on Angela Davis BUT those films are not based on Barbie and that’s a very important difference. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXuoTe8ma1s e:typo Computer Serf fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 04:22
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ungulateman posted:also while you can debate whether smg really is a highly advanced chatbot that does not actually exist, they have said they don't identify themselves as male More importantly, "mansplaining" is just a term for acting condescending to women due to a sexist assumption that they're less intelligent/knowledgeable or whatever. It doesn't cover every situation where someone explains something to someone else. Like, in the case of Barbie Movie, various people ITT actually have displayed confusion about the film's plot, politics, themes, historical context, etc. For the most part, I don't know which of these folks identify as women, but claims like that Barbie is the first ever film where the baddies are patriarchal are just blatantly factually incorrect - even when we add various qualifiers ("first ever such film to make a billion dollars", etc.). Again, none of this is to say it's a bad movie! It's really well-edited, for example.
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Aug 2, 2023 05:24
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KVeezy3 posted:Uh, so what's the feminist difference between a film that deals with women, and a film that deal with being black women? This is such a spectacularly asinine and shallow gotcha that it serves as an insult to both films.
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Aug 2, 2023 05:25
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I don’t think anyone in this thread was ever trying to rank feminist films or say one was more feminist than the other. All those mentioned are undeniably important parts of feminist film canon. Computer Serf posted:Barbie is very direct, unobstructed and forced audiences to hear the message instead of needing to decipher some archetypal analytics. It’s funny that you say this because I think it’s also true that Barbie the film chose to tap in to some big archetypal energies to very deliberately and pointedly try to make universal statements about womanhood in a way movies about actual people at single points in time cannot. (Not to deny their power in creating meaningful symbols of women warriorhood that can make broad statements about female power and gender equality through their messaging.) Barbie could have just been a movie featuring a Barbie. Interviews with those who have tried to take a crack at it in the past like Amy Schumer make clear Mattel very much wanted a movie about A Barbie who invents high heels or some poo poo. Instead we got The Barbie As The Concept of The Ideal Woman - The Movie, complete with a classic Maiden (Sasha)/Mother (Gloria)/Crone (Ruth) trifecta showing up, Barbie herself being born Athena-like into a literally depicted Ur-Girl Consciousness, and a classic The Goddess Returns To Her Man-Destroyed Queendom narrative that others in this thread have already noted bears a powerful resemblance to myths of Inanna. Which is exactly how and why it can set a stage to powerfully make universal pronouncements that Feminism and Womanhood Rocks and Life As A Woman In An Unequal World Sucks But Is Real At Least in a way that the other films mentioned can’t quite say in quite the same way. Over and over again, from Barbie bumping into an elderly woman at a bus stop to the elaborate montage sequence of young girls playing and having fun over an emotional song, deliberate choices were made to depict women at every stage of life as beautiful and important precisely to highlight the beauty and importance of women’s life experience at every stage of life. These are statements that are harder to make as directly and loudly in stories about an event where ideas are discussed rather than about an idea who events occur to. I think that’s where the Barbie movie uniquely excels compared to those films mentioned. Combed Thunderclap fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 05:28
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Computer Serf posted:Barbie is very direct, unobstructed and forced audiences to hear the message instead of needing to decipher some archetypal analytics. Most people see a movie and don’t really think that deeply This stance that Barbie Movie is, like, beneath analysis - that's a very dangerous approach to an otherwise-innocuous film. Pointing out that the film's overwhelmingly fixated on culture as opposed to socioeconomics is very basic, surface-level stuff. It's not complex at all. The belief that stupid audiences will just be unthinkingly affected and changed for the better, that's making recourse to "depth".
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Aug 2, 2023 05:37
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Combed Thunderclap posted:I don’t think anyone in this thread was ever trying to rank feminist films or say one was more feminist than the other. All those mentioned are undeniably important parts of feminist film canon. Yes! The writing is brilliant on the surface level with the very obvious dialog and plot points, but there’s obviously an archetypal film nerd depth and extensive meta criticality. I dare say it’s playing with post-modern critical theory but unpretentiously and with a gigantic brand as a trojan horse. There seems to be deeper references to criticisms of earlier feminist movements; like Reviving Ophelia, Blonde (White) Fragility, deconstructing toxic masculinity and offering a bunch of other contradictions that demand more critical questioning of society and cultural power rather than settling on some simplistic utopian fantasy like hey just gatekeep girlboss gaslight away evil men problem solved The End. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia
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Aug 2, 2023 05:55
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L.H.O.O.Q. posted:70mm film is male coded. May I ask why?
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Aug 2, 2023 06:09
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Combed Thunderclap posted:I don’t think anyone in this thread was ever trying to rank feminist films or say one was more feminist than the other. All those mentioned are undeniably important parts of feminist film canon. Yeah! love this post
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Aug 2, 2023 06:25
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Bogus Adventure posted:May I ask why? Because most men are 70mm long.
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Aug 2, 2023 06:36
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BioEnchanted posted:Because most men are 70mm long. Only when it's cold out...
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Aug 2, 2023 06:37
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https://twitter.com/shoe0nhead/status/1686409836718682112
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Aug 2, 2023 06:49
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Some of you have been posting in CineD for so long that you forgot that there IS a difference between subtext and text. Fury Road has strong feminist themes, but put it next to Barbie and ask a random person which movie is about feminism, they'll point to the latter 99% of the time. Fury Road is about cars and awesome action first and uses that as a vehicle (heh) to say some very poignant things about exploitation and power. Barbie is about feminism first, and somehow, unexpectedly, only secondarily a pink comedy. That is what people are pointing out here and it's extremely uncharitable to read it as "Fury Road [and other examples] are insufficiently feminist". And it is also valid to point out that more people will see Barbie than, say, Hidden Figures. I don't know what Hidden Figures is. I watched Barbie because it's current and a lot of people said it's fun but also surprisingly clever. That does not mean that I or other people who pointed that out think Barbie is the first good carrier of a feminist message because it finally bluntly reaches the doofuses. That's not the text of those posts, it's an interpretation of what you think they mean. And that brings us back to the initial statement about text and subtext.
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Aug 2, 2023 07:06
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As far as I can tell this thread seems to be going the way of the Black Panther thread where people put Barbie on a pedastal for its assumed breaking of the glass ceiling, and it is then used as shorthand to write off anyone who may disagree.
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Aug 2, 2023 07:45
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Roth posted:As far as I can tell this thread seems to be going the way of the Black Panther thread where people put Barbie on a pedastal for its assumed breaking of the glass ceiling, and it is then used as shorthand to write off anyone who may disagree. I’m not really seeing any of this. People are making arguments for the barbie film’s notability along these lines: L.H.O.O.Q. posted:Fury Road, for all its right on political satire and feminism, visually worked on massive car chases, chrome, a guy shredding guitar riffs hooked up to a truck, empowered female characters who also happen to be models who also happen to not be wearing very much. There is such a thing as gendered aesthetics. They’re saying all of this is refreshing in a mainstream blockbuster context, while also acknowledging uneasiness about the barbie film’s ideological limitations and compromised status as apiece of corporate advertising. Both of those things can be true! I don’t think anyone is arguing that barbie is flawless leftist cinema, or that there is no prior tradition of feminist cinema.
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Aug 2, 2023 08:21
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Simply Simon posted:And it is also valid to point out that more people will see Barbie than, say, Hidden Figures. I don't know what Hidden Figures is. It was nominated for three Academy Awards, made $230 million at the box office, and played in 2500 theaters. L.H.O.O.Q. posted:70mm film is male coded. Jesus Christ. Pirate Jet fucked around with this message at 08:24 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 08:21
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Frankly we need to upgrade our terminology to womansplain to all the mansplainers why they are mansplaining. To be inclusive it will now be referred to as amabsplaining. Furthermore if you did not feel the movie based on a famous toy line was special for making a lot of money, starring a blonde white woman, and pointing out that being a woman is hard work then you should honestly talk to some women in your life more.
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Aug 2, 2023 08:23
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Bogus Adventure posted:May I ask why? Sure. 70mm is used as a technical shorthand for the supposed importance and depth of the film. It’s technical dick swinging, similar to audiophile pure silver speaker cables and the like. That kind of craftsmanship fetishism tends to be reserved for male ‘auteurs’. A female director can use 70mm, sure, but in that they would be taking on a masculine aesthetic role. These things are changeable and boundaries move over time of course.
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Aug 2, 2023 08:26
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Lobster Henry posted:I’m not really seeing any of this. People are making arguments for the barbie film’s notability along these lines: There have been multiple posts accusing various posters who are not men of mansplaining. An entire argument is happening that Barbie is especially important due to being a mainstream blockbuster with a feminist slant. This is a rerun of Black Panther arguments where Black Panther was especially important for being the first black superhero. That itself was a rerun of arguments where Wonder Woman was especially important for being the first female superhero.
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Aug 2, 2023 08:30
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Pirate Jet posted:It was nominated for three Academy Awards, made $230 million at the box office, and played in 2500 theaters. Barbie opened in over 4,000 theaters and has already grossed nearly a billion dollars in less than two weeks. Hidden Figures was successful, but "more people will see Barbie than Hidden Figures" is a factual statement.
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Aug 2, 2023 08:34
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L.H.O.O.Q. posted:Fury Road, for all its right on political satire and feminism, visually worked on massive car chases, chrome, a guy shredding guitar riffs hooked up to a truck, empowered female characters who also happen to be models who also happen to not be wearing very much. There is such a thing as gendered aesthetics. L.H.O.O.Q. posted:A female director can use 70mm, sure, but in that they would be taking on a masculine aesthetic role. These are some of the most gender-essentialist posts I’ve ever read all in service of a supposedly feminist film. Acebuckeye13 posted:Barbie opened in over 4,000 theaters and has already grossed nearly a billion dollars in less than two weeks. Hidden Figures was successful, but "more people will see Barbie than Hidden Figures" is a factual statement. Not even close to what I was saying. Hidden Figures was a huge film. If you haven’t heard of it that’s on you not the movie industry, and reducing it to “yeah but I haven’t heard of it” is a self-own that minimizes its significance for women because it didn’t make literally a billion dollars. Pirate Jet fucked around with this message at 08:53 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 08:50
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Well this thread really went to poo poo.
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Aug 2, 2023 08:55
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Pirate Jet posted:These are some of the most gender-essentialist posts I’ve ever read all in service of a supposedly feminist film. The posts are in description of the world as it currently is, which is as you say, gender essentialist. Not how I would want it. I also say that these lines move. It’s close to how when I say personal assistant, most people will think of a female person and when I say road worker people will think male. Road working gear like pick axes, hard hats, pneumatic drills etc. most would imagine a male utilising. It sucks, but here we are. E: to bring it back to the Barbie movie. In Barbie world road workers are barbies. Totally normal in that society. Barbie in the real world goes to talk to road workers assuming they would be barbies too and is met with stereotypical male (gender essentialist) workers. Also Ken fills his dojo casa house with aesthetic signifiers of (gender essentialist) masculinity. Punch bag, saloon doors, mini fridges. He has coded Horses himself as a ‘male’ thing, which as people here have said totally misses horse girls etc. L.H.O.O.Q. fucked around with this message at 09:08 on Aug 2, 2023 |
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Aug 2, 2023 09:00
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