Click. Instant Moral!
June 30th, 2006
I haven’t seen Click. I certainly don’t intend to, because I can’t stand Adam Sandler, and, from the trailer I saw, the plot looks like a re-hash of Bruce Almighty. (Which isn’t surprising actually, since I’ve just learned that the two movies were written by the same people.)
But here’s an interesting article by Caryn James of the NY Times (she’s also the one who wrote the article analyzing the recent “religious” trend in movies that I referenced last month). She discusses how Click and other movies like it spend the entire film making something look desirable to the audience, and then, in a slapdash attempt at a moral, hastily explain that this something doesn’t really pay off.
I haven’t seen many of the films she mentions here (except Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which she singles out as a film that doesn’t tack on a unbelievable moral), so I can’t say much about them. It’s something that has always bothered me about Disney-esque teen movies, which preach “be yourself” ad nauseam at the same time that, in order to be “herself,” the heroine has to straighten her naturally curly hair, lose her glasses, and stop using so many big words. I’m thinking The Princess Diaries here, but there are plenty of other examples–and not just for teens. From what I’ve heard, The Princess Diaries‘ star Anne Hathaway undergoes a similar transformation once again in The Devil Wears Prada.
And then there’s my favorite sentence from the article: “more and more comedies are punishing their characters’ ambition and success even when that successful life is portrayed as desirable.” Ah, the joy of capitalist schizophrenia.
Here’s my question, though: how new do you think this double-message trend is? If it’s only surfaced recently, why? What has brought it about?
P.S. Thanks to “K” for calling the James article to my attention!
Entry Filed under: Movies, Uncategorized
3 Comments Add your own
1. Dormouse | July 1st, 2006 at 5:44 pm
I don’t think it’s new at all. The double-message goes back…well, how far back do you want to go?
1950s: I remember in Pink Think (can’t remember author, don’t feel like looking her up) the author saying that women who did not immediately transition from super-virgin to sex kitten on their wedding nights were thought to be frigid. Of course, you have to enjoy sex with your husband immediately. No matter what. But not too much, of course, b/c men have to do the initiating.
Nineteenth century. Do I even need to list the double messages? That whole century was a constant barrage of them. So much of what was required of people was impossible to realize, much like today.
It goes on and on and on–forever, I think. We’re prone to mistrusting that which we see as desirable, so we simultaneously punish those who attain those desires and and struggle to attain them ourselves. (Hating ourselves all the way, no doubt.)
***
That said, I have some qualms about some of your criticisms of movies like The Princess Diaries, and not just b/c I love that movie. I see the problem, and I agree that it is a problem. But there’s a difference between implying that all girls need a makeover and a boy to be happy, and saying that THIS girl would feel more confident and, thus, happier, if she felt she looked better. I think it’s a subtle difference, but a crucial one, particularly in regards to The Princess Diaries, which I think you criticize somewhat unjustly.
Mia gets the boy in the end, but she gets the boy who wanted her when she was frizzy-haired and gawky. She doesn’t run off with the football star who only notices her when she gets hot. So massive point in the favor of Disney (and Meg, of course).
Second, Mia is demonstrably unhappy with the way she looks. Take that moment early on in the movie, when she looks in the mirror and says, “As usual, this is as good as it’s gonna get.” She doesn’t like the way she looks, but she doesn’t know how to fix it. She doesn’t think she can be pretty, so she has given up trying. But she WANTS to be pretty, or at least, to feel pretty.
Is that wrong? Maybe it’s shallow, but the fact is that when we feel we look good, we feel better about ourselves. Men and women alike. Mia gets shown how pretty she can be, and runs with it. But she’s still Mia–just a more confident Mia who thinks she can be more than an invisible wallflower.
Should it take a makeover to do that? Absolutely not. But in reality, it often helps to change the way you look. Haven’t we all done it every now and then?
Of course we need more girls like Hermione, who only gets dressed up on special occasions, in the movie world. Girls who aren’t necessarily ‘pretty,’ or who, if they are pretty, aren’t the pefect-haired ditzy girls who always seem to get the boy, but who are HAPPY with how they look. B/c I don’t get the sense that Hermione much cares about her hair, though she clearly wanted to change her buck teeth (and who wouldn’t?).
Those girls would be a nice addition. But vilifying the concept of makeovers or whatever as anti-feminist or something (you don’t go that far here, but that’s the end result of the complaint that gets made about such movies) only serves to make smart girls or plain girls or feminist girls feel like shopping for clothes and makeup is somehow caving in.
Or maybe I’m projecting, b/c I spent years convincing myself that looking good or being “girly” or enjoying makeovers and fashion magazines did not equal being a bad feminist who was out to make everyone conform.
2. theotter | July 2nd, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Dormouse: “It goes on and on and on–forever, I think. We’re prone to mistrusting that which we see as desirable, so we simultaneously punish those who attain those desires and and struggle to attain them ourselves. (Hating ourselves all the way, no doubt.)”
Good point. Well stated.
As for The Princess Diaries, I only chose that as an example because it’s the first one that popped into my head (no doubt because of “Prada” press). The problem is not with that particular movie, but with the pattern that accumulates when you look at a whole bunch of romantic comedies.
Though I do get particularly irritated about the hair-straightening issue. I think I’m just bitter because I was in high school during the heyday of Jennifer Aniston’s “Rachel” hair. If you were a (white) prep, you had that hair; if you were a (white) grunge girl, you had long, straight hippie hair. Not much option for those of us with wavy hair. Of course, I think my high school, even though it was huge, was even more into conformity than most. I’ve probably already mentioned how all the showchoir girls had to wear the same color tights (the shade of a rich white girl who’s spent spring break at Gulf Shores), no matter if her natural skin color was darker or lighter. Grrr. Obviously still bitter.
But, anyway, hair-straightening actually even annoys me in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Sure, Hermione should enjoy getting all dolled up, but must she sacrifice her bushy hair to be beautiful?
So, anyway, like you, I’m reacting more from personal experience than anything else. I too would get mad if anyone said that makeup or pretty clothing were anti-feminist. Which is probably why I have this perverse little habit of wearing makeup and dresses to events where I think there will be lots of feminists. It’s like in college, when I would intentionally wear preppy khaki pants to Amnesty International and Earthkeepers meetings. Must. Challenge. Monolithic. Uniform. Even if no one notices my quiet little rebellion.
3. K | July 2nd, 2006 at 9:30 pm
so i have to thank otter for including this in your blog! not sure if the query about ‘how far back this goes’ was meant specifically as an opener. but i’ll throw in my (art) historical contribution!
the reason the james’ article resonated with me in the first place was exactly this slippery ethical slope of the double-entendre… i’ve run across it most frequently in visual media. for example, the mannerist painting “allegory of love” by bronzino (see the following):
http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/work?workNumber=NG651
i remember puzzling in front of this in the nat’l gallery, london in my freshman semester abroad; it’s had lots of diverse allegorical interpretation. but the whole point is that you get to puzzle over the moral while indulging in a completely sensual surface and eroticized subject matter. aphrodite and her offspring indulging in the same!
john berger has talked a lot about the use of oil paint in successful representation of desire and possession, in dutch still lives as well as the female nude. his “ways of seeing” is a classic that anticipates a lot of feminist discussion of ‘the gaze.’
it seems that movies would fit the bill for the artistic medium in contemporary culture that most successfully imitates reality. perhaps why “click!” and others are so insidious in their substitution of certain desires for actual relationships and so insistent in their moralizing against the same.
for another period painting that i find absolutely delightful, see jan gossaert’s “danae” in the alte pinakothek, munich:
http://www.pinakothek.de/alte-pinakothek/sammlung/rundgang/rundgang_inc_en.php?inc=besprechung&which=6624
danae is given an agency here that titian can’t even match, although rembrandt comes close…
i’d like to respond to the issues of make-up and make-overs, but i’ve never had to worry about straightening my very straight hair. i always wanted it to be curly! (and have to confess to the unfortunate ‘big bang’ phenomenon in junior high… oh, dear.)
but even w/ my poke at the mannerists, costume and artifice can be wonderful things. what about V’s mask (in “V for vendetta”)? and i’ve always wanted to be a ph.d. working in academe simply for the sake of wearing robes and some sort of fancy cap!
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