Gone Girl and When Good Movies Happen to Bad People
- Thread starter MovieBob
- Start date
While I will state that Bob is a bit harsh on the accusations against men (there could very well be some favoritism in courts on the woman's side but most academia piles on misconduct and I severely doubt people can inflate stats that much. ), I do see this type of thing happening.
The only thing I say we can do is simply remain critical of those who take the wrong interpretation or those with ulterior motives and inform the public. It is best we keep on persevering
The only thing I say we can do is simply remain critical of those who take the wrong interpretation or those with ulterior motives and inform the public. It is best we keep on persevering
The instant I heard about the twist, I groaned and thought, "Oh, the #gg assholes are going to be circlejerking over this movie for eons."
I'm glad to hear that the film has some element of moral complexity, but of course that's going to fly right over the heads of the morons who latch onto this supposed message.
I'm glad to hear that the film has some element of moral complexity, but of course that's going to fly right over the heads of the morons who latch onto this supposed message.
I think people read whatever they want to read into it, regardless of the authorial intent.
Like Frozen. People keep pairing Elsa and Anna together as a romantic couple even though they're both, you know, sisters. Now, does that mean the creators of Frozen support incest or lesbian relationships? No. Is it wrong to interpret as such? Depends on who you ask.
People will consume and digest it however they wish. Just put forward your opinion and things will get sorted out.
Like Frozen. People keep pairing Elsa and Anna together as a romantic couple even though they're both, you know, sisters. Now, does that mean the creators of Frozen support incest or lesbian relationships? No. Is it wrong to interpret as such? Depends on who you ask.
People will consume and digest it however they wish. Just put forward your opinion and things will get sorted out.
Movies like Fight Club are not alone in this. Black culture tends to worship Scarface for all the wrong reasons, propping Tony Montana up as an iconic gangsta model they wish to become and not the amoral sociopath who should be hated if not pitied.
Makes me wonder if schools should have mandatory courses where students can learn to fully understand the concept of filmmaking and its deeper meanings. And I'm not talking about a college course, I mean a class in middle and high school. Cause if we're ever going to end the shit film careers of Adam Sandler and Michael Bay, young men and women need to understand that some garbage movies are just that.
Also, we might want to put in a mandatory debate/discussion course since that's another thing our culture needs to be educated on.
Makes me wonder if schools should have mandatory courses where students can learn to fully understand the concept of filmmaking and its deeper meanings. And I'm not talking about a college course, I mean a class in middle and high school. Cause if we're ever going to end the shit film careers of Adam Sandler and Michael Bay, young men and women need to understand that some garbage movies are just that.
Also, we might want to put in a mandatory debate/discussion course since that's another thing our culture needs to be educated on.
Sort of figured this would be the case as soon as the trailers came out. I expect the same thing as Bob here does. Its going to be the go to for victim blaming crazypants. I remember I decided to go back to University, a move that has benefited me not just financially, but also gave me some needed exposure to international students and different ways of thinking. A friend of a friend then gave me a rant quoting some Fight Club ideology telling me about how I was falling into a trap etc., etc. I remembered seeing the flick and the twist being novel, but this guy sounded like it was going to inspire him to move into the woods with some rifles and go off the grid.
Unfortunately because of all this, I can't imagine actually being able to sit though the movie now. Coupling that with the fact that, I personally, am a little exhausted by the current "if you bought a house and are married you're just a backward dipshit living in 1950's fantasy land". Look, I'm not criticizing anyone who does not see that as a life for them, and nobody should feel compelled to live a certain life style just cause, but my wife and I enjoy our life of gardening, and animal husbandry in our house. I'm getting tired of turning around every 15 minutes to, marriage is a joke, the home ownership American dream is a lie you won't actually be satisfied with, so I'll just take a pass.
Peace Out.
Unfortunately because of all this, I can't imagine actually being able to sit though the movie now. Coupling that with the fact that, I personally, am a little exhausted by the current "if you bought a house and are married you're just a backward dipshit living in 1950's fantasy land". Look, I'm not criticizing anyone who does not see that as a life for them, and nobody should feel compelled to live a certain life style just cause, but my wife and I enjoy our life of gardening, and animal husbandry in our house. I'm getting tired of turning around every 15 minutes to, marriage is a joke, the home ownership American dream is a lie you won't actually be satisfied with, so I'll just take a pass.
Peace Out.
From a Guardian interview with Gillian Flynn:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/01/gillian-flynn-bestseller-gone-girl-misogyny
"To me, that puts a very, very small window on what feminism is," she responds. "Is it really only girl power, and you-go-girl, and empower yourself, and be the best you can be? For me, it's also the ability to have women who are bad characters ? the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissably bad ? trampy, vampy, bitchy types ? but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish ... I don't write psycho bitches. The psycho ***** is just crazy ? she has no motive, and so she's a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness." Writing on her website, she concedes that hers is "not a particularly flattering portrait of women, but that's fine by me. Isn't it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I've grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains." It should probably be added that her lurid plots make no claim to social realism: to interpret her evil female characters as somehow representative of their real-life gender, you must willfully overlook hundreds of pages of other people and events that you'd almost certainly never encounter in reality, either.
Basically, evil women are the fleshing out of the entire human experience in the way men get to be both heroes and villains indiscriminately. Fair enough; hell, makes the children's book thing, starring a flawless female lead, make a lot more sense in context.
Still, I too went to that place the second I heard the twist and in some way it's still trading on the dynamic that the woman is usually smarter and far more put together (good or evil) while the man is a lunk-head. I mentioned this before in another thread in that I feel the pendulum seems to swing too far in one direction or the other to fulfill some societal need to empower either sex at the supposed cost of the other and I don't know of a lot of films or stories that involve two people of opposite sexes being on equal footing, though maybe I just don't know about them. I get that there's a lot more to it than this surface reading - modern society is practiced insanity seems to be the main hook - but it seems to me at least that the "battle of the sexes" is just something that's going to be more immediate in focus.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/may/01/gillian-flynn-bestseller-gone-girl-misogyny
"To me, that puts a very, very small window on what feminism is," she responds. "Is it really only girl power, and you-go-girl, and empower yourself, and be the best you can be? For me, it's also the ability to have women who are bad characters ? the one thing that really frustrates me is this idea that women are innately good, innately nurturing. In literature, they can be dismissably bad ? trampy, vampy, bitchy types ? but there's still a big pushback against the idea that women can be just pragmatically evil, bad and selfish ... I don't write psycho bitches. The psycho ***** is just crazy ? she has no motive, and so she's a dismissible person because of her psycho-bitchiness." Writing on her website, she concedes that hers is "not a particularly flattering portrait of women, but that's fine by me. Isn't it time to acknowledge the ugly side? I've grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains." It should probably be added that her lurid plots make no claim to social realism: to interpret her evil female characters as somehow representative of their real-life gender, you must willfully overlook hundreds of pages of other people and events that you'd almost certainly never encounter in reality, either.
Basically, evil women are the fleshing out of the entire human experience in the way men get to be both heroes and villains indiscriminately. Fair enough; hell, makes the children's book thing, starring a flawless female lead, make a lot more sense in context.
Still, I too went to that place the second I heard the twist and in some way it's still trading on the dynamic that the woman is usually smarter and far more put together (good or evil) while the man is a lunk-head. I mentioned this before in another thread in that I feel the pendulum seems to swing too far in one direction or the other to fulfill some societal need to empower either sex at the supposed cost of the other and I don't know of a lot of films or stories that involve two people of opposite sexes being on equal footing, though maybe I just don't know about them. I get that there's a lot more to it than this surface reading - modern society is practiced insanity seems to be the main hook - but it seems to me at least that the "battle of the sexes" is just something that's going to be more immediate in focus.
Wait wait wait wait....
So the author of the book admits that she wanted to put a small window on what feminism is, and show women as something other than perfect beings and perpetual victims, and yet you chastise the "average moron" for taking exactly that message out of the movie?
So the author of the book admits that she wanted to put a small window on what feminism is, and show women as something other than perfect beings and perpetual victims, and yet you chastise the "average moron" for taking exactly that message out of the movie?
No, I don't think that's what he's saying. What he is saying is that there will be some assholes out there, no matter what evidence is presented, no matter how the story plays out will engage in victim blaming and when challenged cite this movie as evidence that all women are conniving evil creatures hiding behind pretty masks. The author is saying anyone can be evil, the morons will say is prof that all women are evil.johnnybleu said:
...As badly as Bob mis-projects the "ha, traditional relationships are nothing but artifice and in inevitable decline" stamp on the work of an apparently happily married mother of two?
Okay, catty. But if there is one general legitimate complaint against feminist critique, its the (sometimes underlying, sometimes overt) implication that society and/or men have to be protected from the media by its self-appointed, clearly more "enlightened", members.
No dumb or shallow interpretation doesn't stick to a certain number of people. If some of Fight Club's audience failed to notice that Jack/Tyler is quite literally insane, a casual "stick it to 'em" analysis fails to note that there's also a very real understanding in the movie that breaking out of societal expectations may be the only way to make an impact on a drowsy, apathetic culture. Fincher clearly doesn't condemn that idea- indeed, given his work, it would by hypocritical to do so.
In short, keep talking, keep critiquing, just don't assume that there's some end-point where you get an A+ on the quiz because you've come up with the "real" message.
Okay, catty. But if there is one general legitimate complaint against feminist critique, its the (sometimes underlying, sometimes overt) implication that society and/or men have to be protected from the media by its self-appointed, clearly more "enlightened", members.
No dumb or shallow interpretation doesn't stick to a certain number of people. If some of Fight Club's audience failed to notice that Jack/Tyler is quite literally insane, a casual "stick it to 'em" analysis fails to note that there's also a very real understanding in the movie that breaking out of societal expectations may be the only way to make an impact on a drowsy, apathetic culture. Fincher clearly doesn't condemn that idea- indeed, given his work, it would by hypocritical to do so.
In short, keep talking, keep critiquing, just don't assume that there's some end-point where you get an A+ on the quiz because you've come up with the "real" message.
Oh yeah because there's TOTALLY only one way to interpret a piece of art.
Give me a fucking break.
Give me a fucking break.
What?Burnouts3s3 said:
How in the fuck?!
WHAT?!
OT: Truly compelling villains like Tyler Durden, among others, are a thin line to walk, because a lot of the time, part of their appeal lies in a certain grudging respect or admiration. Yes, they may be bastards/bitches of the highest order, but they're just so God-damn good at it that they can't help but captivate you. Either because of their intelligence, or charisma, or simply their liberating disregard for any moral line society wants to put in the way of what they want. You watch with rapt attention because a small, dark part of you, that balanced people at least keep well restrained during everyday life, can't help but want to be like them; and that will, regrettably, always cause people who aren't too good at separating reality from fantasy to feel affirmed in their beliefs because X interesting character in Y celebrated movie 'says what we're all thinking'.
I find it interesting, the different things different individuals can read into the same material. It seems to me that people are far to quick to assume that their own interpretations of things are the 'right' one... but hey. To each their own.
Rule 34, son. If it exists, there's porn of it.NinjaDeathSlap said:
OT: I'm not worried about the kind of guys Bob described in his article getting the wrong message from Gone Girl; what's really scary is the thought of someone thinking Amy is a role model to follow, like Tyler Durden was by the douchebags of yore.
Well, while I don't know Bob on any real level, nor can I know what his intentions are in writing the article, I can say that to me it feels like a preemptive attack. I recently learned that Bob has some pretty heavy feminist leanings, and may even identify as a SJW. With that in mind, you can actually taste the disdain for men in the article-- it's dripping with resentment for "masculinity".Hunter Grant said:
Call me paranoid, but all I see in this article is a line drawn in the sand. It's basically setting up the framework that anyone who might (rightly) draw a few parallels between the movie and real-world feminism is an ignorant woman-hater who missed the point. Exactly what you said; "assholes" who will "engage in victim blaming" and claim that "all women are conniving evil creatures". The sad reality is that in the real world, a woman doesn't have to fake her own murder to land her husband in hot water-- she only needs to call the cops and say she feels "threatened". But of course, me pointing out the fact that the movie might shed some light on the less desirable fruits of modern feminism means I couldn't possibly "get" it.
Bob can you please just write one review or article without attacking one group of people. The author wanted to show that women can be just as evil as men and had something to say about modern media and modern feminism. You seem to also not realize that some feminists will completely misinterpret the meaning of the film, claiming it promotes victim blaming and demonizes all women.
Also on another note, what the fuck do you have against masculinity. Are you still pissed off that some douche-bag in high school bullied you? Or are just trying to make yourself seem more "progressive"?
Also on another note, what the fuck do you have against masculinity. Are you still pissed off that some douche-bag in high school bullied you? Or are just trying to make yourself seem more "progressive"?