The Ugly Truth

[laurafairlie]

Okay, I admit at the get-go that I didn't expect to like anything about this movie, but Gerard Butler is great in this role. Mr. "This is Sparta!!!!" former-300 star as the ultimate new-millenium bad boy. Anyone seen it? Blow me and it out of the water if you feel like it. But I really enjoyed it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq2G4Gvy5fs

 

[3113]

Okay, I admit at the get-go that I didn't expect to like anything about this movie, but Gerard Butler is great in this role. Mr. "This is Sparta!!!!" former-300 star as the ultimate new-millenium bad boy.

I won't blow you out of the water, but I will *sighhhhhhhhh* about the fact that we can't seem to get out of "bromance" waters. This is where all women are either bitches or beautiful stick figures; and their only job in the story is to learn that real men never grow up, and that boy-men are god's gift to women.

And hey, I get it. We all have to find and celebrate that inner child (though it seems that Americans are stuck in a tantrum where we're screaming, "I don't haveta be a responsible adult!" ). And I get that "inner child" includes little boys who want to play in the mud, gross out the adults, be mischievous, etc. But I'm getting sick of the fact that the storytelling celebration of such boy-men always includes misogyny.

 

[laurafairlie]

I won't blow you out of the water, but I will *sighhhhhhhhh* about the fact that we can't seem to get out of "bromance" waters. This is where all women are either bitches or beautiful stick figures; and their only job in the story is to learn that real men never grow up, and that boy-men are god's gift to women.

And hey, I get it. We all have to find and celebrate that inner child (though it seems that Americans are stuck in a tantrum where we're screaming, "I don't haveta be a responsible adult!" ). And I get that "inner child" includes little boys who want to play in the mud, gross out the adults, be mischievous, etc. But I'm getting sick of the fact that the storytelling celebration of such boy-men always includes misogyny.

Awww. Thanks for not blowing me out of the water, sweetie.

I know. I know. It is a movie that somehow goes to the lowest common denominator in many ways. And, intellectually, I agree with most of what you said about the issue of American immaturity and bromance genre cliches. Still, even though I'm an "englightened" woman (whatever the fuck that means) and educated (whatever the fuck...ditto) and capable of seeing through the lines drawn in the movie, I just liked it. I like him as an actor. I like that he is a straightforward and physical guy but also capable of self-assessment and insight. Anyway, it's not like I'm saying it's the best film of all time. No, hardly.

That film is probably one of these five:

• The Wizard of Oz
• The Postman Always Rings Twice (Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange)
• The Stoning of Soraya M.
• The Queen
• A Streetcar Named Desire

 

[stephen55]

It's got to be Casablanca...

My favorite movie of all time is Casablanca. Humphrey Bogart at his best, followed closely by his performance in The African Queen. Romance, mystery, espionage and a villainous enemy or two, plus the all time record for top movies quotes.

When a guy like Rick, decides he has to walk away from a woman like Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) and let her down easy, he comes up with this...

Ilsa: When I said I would never leave you...
Rick: And you never will. I've got a job to do too. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of.

For Rick, no sacrifice (political or romantic) is too noble or great for their idealized Parisian love - and where he must go (to jail or into exile again?) she cannot "follow":

Rick: Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that. (She drops her head tearfully. He touches her chin and raises it to gently bolster her up.) Now, now. Here's looking at you, kid.

 

[laurafairlie]

That is a beautiful movie to me too. And that scene in particular, well, let's just say that it is one that always has made a deep impact on me. God, wouldn't it be great if we could make our real-life dialogue as good as that? (dreaming)

 

[Verdad]

I'd like to help with blowing out of the water )) but I haven't seen it. I'm in one of the rare-for-me phases of watching movies with some regularity but still not that thorough.

The recent thing that probably stuck with me most was District 9. After watching it, I even decided Avatar was not so bad. When put together, the two are like one Lynch movie!

 

[laurafairlie]

I'd like to help with blowing out of the water )) but I haven't seen it. I'm in one of the rare-for-me phases of watching movies with some regularity but still not that thorough.

The recent thing that probably stuck with me most was District 9. After watching it, I even decided Avatar was not so bad. When put together, the two are like one Lynch movie!

LOL! Too funny about District 9. I haven't seen it, but given what you just said about Avatar, (a film I really didn't like) I think I'll steer away from it.

 

[Verdad]

LOL! Too funny about District 9. I haven't seen it, but given what you just said about Avatar, (a film I really didn't like) I think I'll steer away from it.

But I did like it! It is in a sense the same idea as Avatar, except the take on it is to Avatar like a nightmare is to a spuriously pretty dream.

The rest of what I've been watching lately was more like catching up with some omissions everyone's probably seen ages ago.

 

[laurafairlie]

But I did like it! It is in a sense the same idea as Avatar, except the take on it is to Avatar like a nightmare is to a spuriously pretty dream.

The rest of what I've been watching lately was more like catching up with some omissions everyone's probably seen ages ago.

I see what you mean. I definitely enjoy a dreamscape aspect to films and have always liked David Lynch for that reason. I'm trying to think of other directors besides Lynch whose work has left me with a kind of dream-feeling. Lynch is more surreal and modern, but the only other one that comes to mind is Billy Wilder from the 1940s who did Sunset Blvd.. I like it mostly because it is narrated by the dead guy in the pool. How could I not love that?

 

[laurafairlie]

Next up on my film menu, "Broken Embraces," starring Penelope Cruz. I love Almodovar, so I'm looking forward to delving into it tonight. See the trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IApuTyhNW_E

 

[LaRocha]

Okay, I admit at the get-go that I didn't expect to like anything about this movie, but Gerard Butler is great in this role. Mr. "This is Sparta!!!!" former-300 star as the ultimate new-millenium bad boy. Anyone seen it? Blow me and it out of the water if you feel like it. But I really enjoyed it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq2G4Gvy5fs

I remember seeing this, I also recently saw The Bounty Hunter with Gerry Butler. The consumers of these movies are women. My wife has to see them, I try to get some sleep in the theatre because the beginning always determines the end. The female centerpieces in these films are what women are buying. Stick figures, gross attitudes, vacuous head spaces posing as career women etc. are the current heroines. None of this is meant for a male audience. The female never had to change in the old romantic comedy, it was always about outside forces pushing two people apart. Now the female has to transform herself and also transform the male to achieve perfect love.

There is a new rash of misogyny in the romantic comedy, but it's not thrown in for the men. Sweet friend that's overlooked vs. crappy boyfriend shouldn't have made it as far as it did. Movies meant to sell romance and movies meant to sell violence have just been taken to the Nth degree in the last twenty years. A female has to transform a miso dirtball to find happiness.

 

[laurafairlie]

I remember seeing this, I also recently saw The Bounty Hunter with Gerry Butler. The consumers of these movies are women. My wife has to see them, I try to get some sleep in the theatre because the beginning always determines the end. The female centerpieces in these films are what women are buying. Stick figures, gross attitudes, vacuous head spaces posing as career women etc. are the current heroines. None of this is meant for a male audience. The female never had to change in the old romantic comedy, it was always about outside forces pushing two people apart. Now the female has to transform herself and also transform the male to achieve perfect love.

There is a new rash of misogyny in the romantic comedy, but it's not thrown in for the men. Sweet friend that's overlooked vs. crappy boyfriend shouldn't have made it as far as it did. Movies meant to sell romance and movies meant to sell violence have just been taken to the Nth degree in the last twenty years. A female has to transform a miso dirtball to find happiness.

How banal.

 

[LaRocha]

Droll.

 

[Lady_Guenivere]

Okay, I admit at the get-go that I didn't expect to like anything about this movie, but Gerard Butler is great in this role. Mr. "This is Sparta!!!!" former-300 star as the ultimate new-millenium bad boy. Anyone seen it? Blow me and it out of the water if you feel like it. But I really enjoyed it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uq2G4Gvy5fs

Stop...you had me at Gerard Butler...I don't often swoon...but

SWOON

 

[laurafairlie]

Stop...you had me at Gerard Butler...I don't often swoon...but

SWOON

Oh honey, I want to do bad things to him.

 

[Lady_Guenivere]

Oh honey, I want to do bad things to him.

Leather kilt...nuff said.

 

[Handley_Page]

Leather kilt...nuff said.

with a pink top ? Yeugh!

 

[Lady_Guenivere]

with a pink top ? Yeugh!

He can pull it off... or take it off...whichever.

 

[stephen55]

LOL! Too funny about District 9. I haven't seen it, but given what you just said about Avatar, (a film I really didn't like) I think I'll steer away from it.

Don't!! I've watched District 9 twice and I thought it is a great movie. Set against a backdrop of how we treat a band of lost aliens is the real theme of how we treat each other. Don't pass it by.

 

[Lady_Guenivere]

Don't!! I've watched District 9 twice and I thought it is a great movie. Set against a backdrop of how we treat a band of lost aliens is the real theme of how we treat each other. Don't pass it by.

Yes, I thought it was a very good movie...maybe a wee bit graphic in parts but the story was very profound.

 

[xssve]

I won't blow you out of the water, but I will *sighhhhhhhhh* about the fact that we can't seem to get out of "bromance" waters. This is where all women are either bitches or beautiful stick figures; and their only job in the story is to learn that real men never grow up, and that boy-men are god's gift to women.

And hey, I get it. We all have to find and celebrate that inner child (though it seems that Americans are stuck in a tantrum where we're screaming, "I don't haveta be a responsible adult!" ). And I get that "inner child" includes little boys who want to play in the mud, gross out the adults, be mischievous, etc. But I'm getting sick of the fact that the storytelling celebration of such boy-men always includes misogyny.

In order to address that I think you have to establish the meta frame here, which is that being a responsible adult isn't necessarily that much fun, we engage in fantasy to escape from the drudgery of responsibility, to which we must inevitably return once the credits roll.

When it comes to media, as creators, we accept our role as spinners of fantasy; we worry about how "real" it is according to our own inner vision of art, our artistic principles, integrity, etc. - and that only really matters to us, as creators - lurking in the back of every artists mind when they engage in the act of creation is that the audience for whatever work of art we are producing, really only asks to be entertained, to escape reality if only briefly - any edification they may otherwise receive, is gravy, it's an externality - first and foremost, they want to be entertained.

Thus, the amount of "high art" being produced seldom affect the amount of "low" art being produced, if, for the sake of argument, I define "high art" here as art that reflects or illuminates some aspect of the human condition other than the desire to, be entertained, to escape reality - i.e., the use of the term "high art", as a linguistic device, is typically defended by to something along the lines of "it makes you think", it generates some emotion, or cognition, often complex symphonies of emotion and cognition other than simple basic voyeuristic appeal that kills a few minutes and is preferable to, and more interesting than, staring at the wall.

I've always enjoyed movies and stories that play with this meta frame in the work itself - it was kind of a common theme in Eighties movies: After Hours, Who's That Girl, Thirteen Going on Thirty, Big, etc., as opposed to the "coming of age", "Brat Pack" themes also popular at the time, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club, etc., or the pure pop appeal movies, guy flicks and chick flicks, reflecting the basic division, real or imagined between the male preoccupation with the arts of war and the female preoccupation with the arts of love.

I think your Bromance, may simply reflect an attempt to synthesize the two, a Chimera, a chic flic that men will enjoy or an action flic with some interest for the ladies - and one can in some sense, honor the attempt while still recognizing that there are a lot of ways this process can go awry and the result be more monstrous than beautiful.

It more tends to reflect the marketing divisions that currently exist, i.e., we are a nation divided into demographics - the whole concept of a division between "chick flics" and "guy flics" didn't really even exist when the other movies Laura mentions, The Wizard of Oz, etc., were made - the market was conceived of as a much more homogeneous - there were still some divisions, family movies, romantic comedies, drama, etc., but these divisions reflected a much less fine grained demographic divisions, unlike the current market where there is literally a "Trekkie" market, i.e., SF/Fantasy isn't a broad, single market, but subdivided into Trekkie, D&D, etc.

I think, inevitably, you're going to get attempts at fusion, some work, some don't - the Matrix fused mystery, drama, and romance, and whole host of counterculture symbols into a Dadaist surrealistic pastiche,
of SF, cyber, Goth, martial arts, car chases, etc., and not surprisingly, it almost attained status as a universal metaphor for the "Hamster Wheel of Necessity", as Sarah Silverman calls it, though possibly it ultimately failed to bridge the gap between culture and counterculture.

Anyway, I'm probably overthinking it as a usual, but the bottom line is, we do need that element of fantasy in our lives - can your inner child come over and play?

It resonates and ripples into the broader currents of social reality - we're a generation, and a culture, saturated in media from birth, in many ways media has replaced religion, it represents the spirit world, a world of fantasy where "purity", love, honor, which in reality is often an abstraction, a facade, merely another media generated illusion, exists and is embodied for the duration.

My concerns with it might be more along the lines of the fact that it is an alienating influence, media is existential, it's only becomes social in the act of discussing it socially, and has value in that it does describe a set of more or less common symbols - at the same time, we see it driving wedges between "demographics" liberals vs. conservatives, etc., generating profoundly antisocial energies.

The problem in this, is that media generates the very symbols it uses to describe itself, it's own self generated reality designed, like a drug, to generate a demand for more media - the only external frame of reference, is "reality", which media manipulates, simultaneously revealing and obscuring according to it's own designs.

I think we need a metaframe for discussing media, something akin to post modern deconstruction, which although it has the value of identifying antecedents and making associations, it invokes symbols often meaningful only to liberal arts and philosophy majors - valid, but obscure.

I'm thinking of something a little more basic, a pop language for a pop culture.

While you're digesting that, if indeed you're inclined to do so, I'm interested in some examples of misogyny that you perceive (I have not actually seen the media in question), because I do believe that the fundamental duality, both real and abstract, biological and social/linguistic generated by the Twenty Third Chromosome plays a central role in all symbolic systems, both in media and our cultural dialogue - so many of our differences and issues seem to center around gender identity/values.

Since, on the flip side, you also see that men are often portrayed as childlike and unreliable, the women as always having to straighten them out, i.e., there are maternalistic as well as paternalistic values being presented, whether or not you wish to argue about the ratios in detail.

 

[xssve]

Actually, that was all a set up to introduce Two new words I've just coined to attempt to describe sexual duality in the media: andromage and gynomage, i.e., andro+homage and gyno+homage, i.e., the homage to the male principle - Arnie Schwarzenegger, the man of action, and the female principle - oh, I dunno, take your pick, whoever the hottie du jour is, but generally representing feminine allure.

This particular conceptualization, action vs. allure is of course itself a "Hamster Wheel of Necessity", i.e., the motivation of the object of action is to impress the object of allure, but as a generalization it can also denote purer forms of gender polarity, or conversely, a more androgynous synthesis, it's representation connotes whatever the current cultural conceptualization of "man" and "woman" might be, which is a lot like trying to pin down a moving target.

Essentially, I'm trying to reduce and treat gender as a purely abstract symbol that encompasses both biology, and social identity/association without implicitly confusing the two, and in that effort, I conceived these words as first and foremost, describing an homage to gender itself, appearance, biological gender, Penis and Vagina, testicles and womb, as opposed to the more abstract gender associations generated by the interactions of social politics and biology. I also don't want to confuse it with phallocentrism or gynocentrism, which are more concerned with the symbolism of the sexual organs themselves specifically, rather than the organic whole.

In that sense, porn can actually be largely described as gynomagy, for example, although I'm open to argument.

I originally was simply trying to find a word to describe the "worship" of the male form evident in Greek culture, "andromagy" but thinking that "worship" might be too strong a word to describe it - if I'm re-inventing the wheel, and there is already a word for it - and it's hard to imagine there isn't - by all means, correct me, I might just be brain farting.

 

[Handley_Page]

Anyway, it's not like I'm saying it's the best film of all time. No, hardly.

That film is probably one of these five:

• The Wizard of Oz
• The Postman Always Rings Twice (Jack Nicholson/Jessica Lange)
• The Stoning of Soraya M.
• The Queen
• A Streetcar Named Desire

In my case, I'd have to add "the Battle of Britain", but I concede that it might not rank highly in the 'States.