Kevin's Watch

No Country for Fat Chicks
Radar rounds up the decade's most misogynistic movies

good list - missing Coyote Ugly. or is it out of the time frame?

Are you posting this to get some honest feedback? Caution: honesty follows . . . .

Rather boring, I'd say. And a bit contradictory. So Bridget Jones being overweight and insecure, and falling in a love with a man who loves her just the way she is, is somehow a misogynistic message? But if Julia Roberts gets an Oscar for merely "wearing a push-up bra," (i.e. being rewarded purely for her sexuality and appearance), that's bad? What?

Speaking of Ms. Roberts, what is misogynistic about her playing a proto-feminist empowering her young female students? If (as the writers claim) the message of this movie is that "you can't have it all, feminism lied," I'm confused why Wikipedia describes the movie as:

Watson tries to open her students' minds to their freedom to do whatever they want with their lives. She encourages her students to believe in themselves, to study to become career professionals, and to improve their economic futures. She uses her art teachings as a vehicle to put across her opinion to the young women; that her students needn't conform to stereotypes of women made by society, or the roles made for them by society, as women born to become housewives and mothers. She felt that women could do more things in life than solely adopt the roles of wives and mothers. In one scene of the movie, she shows her students four newspaper ads, and asks them to question what the future will think of the idea that women are born into the roles of wives and mothers.

That woman-hating bitch.

Oh well, since I didn't see any of these movies, I probably have missed the subtle misogynistic messages that some women seem to find so easily in everything they watch. I'm so glad don't watch movies with some political agenda in mind, trying to look for offensive stuff to whine about and complain of victimization. I just watch movies for fun.

malik: do you deny that movies have messages?

Meeeeh, the author comes of as a little...

Well I don't want to be misogynistic! (Think Dam... but smaller)

I'm sorry girls, but if you want to know what (straight) boys are actually like when you aren't around, watch Superbad.

i should think that the celebration of superbad is the most troubling aspect. i saw little more than a porkys riff while critics seem to have found a lost masterpiece.

First of all, Porky's was a masterpiece....

And Superbad absolutely nailed what high school guys are like. It's the most realistic movie about teen boys ever made.

Cail wrote:First of all, Porky's was a masterpiece....

And Superbad absolutely nailed what high school guys are like. It's the most realistic movie about teen boys ever made.

and that makes it good? i saw a bunch of crude jokes tied together with a tired plot.

and are you being sarcastic about porky's?

Nope. Porky's is pretty much an archetype when it comes to film.

Superbad was great. Crude, realistic, funny jokes that work within the framework of the story.

Sorry you didn't get it, but I think Superbad is one of, if not the funniest film(s) of the last 10 years.

it may be that i just don't like comedies all that much.

Yeah, that'd do it.

While some of the points made in that list are perfectly fair, it does reek somewhat of looking for something to be offended by.

Yeah, I don't really see what was so misogynistic about any of those movies.

Also, Superbad is a fantastic and entertaining flick.

Superbad is the only Teen movie I have ever seen that I was actually able to relate to my own Adolescence. It really hit the nail on the head for me.

I dread to think what the author of the list would make of SRD's work. Full of rape, abuse, bad decisions by women... What a misogynist he is.

Runner-up
Brown Bunny: It's not just because Chloë Sevigny gave Vincent Gallo a very real blowjob. Okay, actually it is.

'Nuff said. Apparently, any movie that doesn't portray every woman in it as a sexless, but noble heroine, while simultaneously avoiding the topic of sex (or people who enjoy it), does employ almost any kind of humor, or anything remotely related to being male from adolescence on (possibly even before that - is A Christmas Story on this list? After all, the mother isn't always perfect, the boy wants a >gasp!< gun for Christmas, and then there's that whole tongue-stuck-on-metal-pole thing...), is misogynistic.

Plissken wrote:

Runner-up
Brown Bunny: It's not just because Chloë Sevigny gave Vincent Gallo a very real blowjob. Okay, actually it is.

'Nuff said. Apparently, any movie that doesn't portray every woman in it as a sexless, but noble heroine, while simultaneously avoiding the topic of sex (or people who enjoy it), does employ almost any kind of humor, or anything remotely related to being male from adolescence on (possibly even before that - is A Christmas Story on this list? After all, the mother isn't always perfect, the boy wants a >gasp!< gun for Christmas, and then there's that whole tongue-stuck-on-metal-pole thing...), is misogynistic.

Yeah, the more I read of the list (I only got halfway through the first time, before giving up in disgust) the more it seems that the writer maligns any film that involves a woman having any kind of romance, attraction, or indeed anything whatsoever that involves a man.

And Sin City? Yes, most of the women in that are prostitutes or strippers. It's meant to be grimy and seedy. Is she trying to say prostitutes and strippers don't exist? She may not like the notion, but she can't deny its existence and expect to be taken seriously. Besides, it's not like the men came out of it much better. I could whinge about Benicio Del Toro's sleazy bent cop being male, but....why?

Besides, Sin City had an unusually high amount of testicular destruction - and usually in recompense for disrespecting or hurting women. You'd think the author would love it.

I think you can take ANY movie in existence and find a "reason" why it is sexist against women and I also think the person who wrote that article was over the top. Hell, the author of that article could probably find something anti feminist in "A League of their Own." Sheesh.

Cameraman Jenn wrote:I think you can take ANY movie in existence and find a "reason" why it is sexist against women and I also think the person who wrote that article was over the top. Hell, the author of that article could probably find something anti feminist in "A League of their Own." Sheesh.

I was offended that the team in A League of their Own had to be coached by a man. I think that's sexist.

(Am I on the right track here?)