Or would the film have been written off as a variation on something resembling Miley Cyrus's The Last Song? And why is Woodley only now being touted as a fine actress, when she's been delivering solid starring work on The Secret Life of the American Teenager for several seasons now? The same phenomena applies to Blake Lively, who gave a fine debut performance in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, as well as a solid supporting performance in the Robin Wright vehicle, The Private Lives of Pippa Lee. But, even ignoring her starring work on several seasons of Gossip Girl, it was only after she played a strung-out junkie to fill out the virgin/whore dynamic of Ben Affleck's The Town that pundits and critics started crowing about her acting. Am I right to believe that male-driven dramas are automatically given more weight and credibility than female-driven ones? Would Something Borrowed, arguably not a good movie, have been written off as a bad romantic comedy (it's not a comedy) or its protagonists so swiftly condemned as spawns-of-Satan if they were men undergoing the same dramatic arc? Would I Don't Know How She Does It? been so absurdly written off as a variation on Sex and the City (it's not...) if it had been a dramedy about the struggles of a working father trying to be a provider and an active parent? Would Bridesmaids be (deservedly) in the Best Picture Oscar race if it weren't written off in many circles as 'The Hangover for Girls'? I think we all know the answers.
Scott Mendelson
7 comments:
i agree. actresses have it tougher for some reason in terms of the fact that they have to be sexual deviants or deviant by any fashion to receive positive criticism. male actor can have a lot more subdued, slice-of-life performances and be seen as riveting. what gives?
I was with you until you implied that Secret Life of the American Teenager isn't one of the worst shows in the history of television.
I hate to go all Twilight here - because yes the movies are very very bad - but I was talking to a friend about Breaking Dawn (his girlfriend dragged him to it) and he kept ranting about how Bella is just a selfish B*tch who does whatever she wants and expects the men in her life clean up her mess (wolves fighting vamps because she decides she wants her baby yada yada) and I was struck. Any heist movie, any war movie, and drama whatsoever that has a male lead, you never hear people saying, "What an as*hole! He just draws up this plan without even thinking how he's endangering the friends that are in on it with him!" You never hear that. The lead male is always singularly focused on the goal at hand and there's always a hot lady who loves and supports him, or one in the wings who's pining over him. Always. So I think most movies about women suck - they're watered down / aimed at 12 year olds because movies about women who focus on themselves (their relationship / their career / their kid even) look like selfish b*tches, or just boring women (everyone reveres Road to Perdition but Anywhere But Here had date-night husbands everywhere rolling their eyes) so no guy wants to sit in a theater with that boring/b*tchy woman for 2 hours and thus those movies never get made. A strung out Townie in a push-up bra though? Hell yes! They'd like more of that please.
terms of endearment was a big oscar winner though
I don't know why I'm so hung up on this topic, but here goes...
Yep Terms of Endearment won all the awards thirty year ago. Then not so much with the female-lead movies since then. Titanic, SHakespeare in Love and Million Dollar Baby had great female parts, but they all existed as counterparts to the male lead. Almost all other best picture winners have been in the "guy on a mission" mold like Dances With Wolves, Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, Braveheart, American Beauty, Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, Lord of the Rings, No Country For Old Men, Slumdog Millionaire, Hurt Locker, King's Speech...
That was nearly 30 years ago, the industry was arguably actually more progressive than it is today in regards to gender. You had actresses who could actually age into their 40s and still get work, films like Dirty Dancing that involved abortions and teen sexuality that didn't set pundits aflame, and random movies like Space Camp that had a 50/50 gender split (3 guys, 3 girls) where none of the women were 'the babe' and none of the guys where trying to get into anyone's pants. If Space Camp was made today, it would be five guys and one insanely hot girl whose primary dilemma was choosing which of the predatory male leads she should fall for. Even The Goonies (which I think is vastly overrated) had two female leads, while its 'homage' Super 8 has one young girl who's sole value is as the love interest and third-act hostage.
I'm actually going to write a big piece on just that before the year is out. But yes, female characters are judged on an explicit moral scale while male characters are not. A male character who clearly does bad things (The Town, Drive, etc) is considered an 'anti-hero' while a female character who exhibits the slightest amount of selfishness or even personal emotions (see Leslie Mann in Knocked Up and The Change Up) is derided as 'a bitch' or 'insufferable' or the like.
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