feminism Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Terrific Trailers: 9 to 5
Filed under: Comedy », Fandom », Trailers and Clips », Scenes We Love »
If you are a regular around these parts, then you have probably noticed that I have a streak of feminism in me a mile wide, and while I've read all the great tomes on equality, most, if not all of my 'girl-power' tendencies can be traced back to Dolly Parton. So for today's installment of Terrific Trailers, I went back all the way to 1980 to bring you the trailer for the greatest feminist film ever made, 9 to 5. Colin Higgins' comedy was the story of three working women (played by Parton, Lily Tomlin, and Jane Fonda) as they banded together to bring down their pig of a boss, and was the first time the idea of a 'gender divide' made it's way into my kiddie consciousness...and I've been a card-carrying little feminist ever since.
It's strange to see a trailer that looks nothing like what passes for a quality trailer or teaser these days. There is no star power, no "In a world without...", in fact, we don't even glimpse the principal players until the end of the clip. But what is truly funny is that considering the huge social and political point the film is trying to make about women in the workplace, the trailer seems content to treat it all as a silly joke -- "Oh that wacky boss who steals your ideas and grabs your ass..." But, I'm realistic enough to know that if you aren't trying to scare people off, you have to make sure you don't use the dreaded "F" word -- which I guess means not much has changed since 1980, after all.
After the jump; the personal gets political...
Cinematical Seven: More Than One Woman ... (The Bechdel Rule)
Filed under: Comedy », Gay & Lesbian », Independent », Cinematical Seven »
The other day, a blog entry from the cinetrix about "The Rule" evoked a flood of memories from my love-movies-hate-the-patriarchy college days. In 1989, my then-roommate's then-girlfriend showed me a comic strip from the series Dykes to Watch Out For by Alison Bechdel. The strip was called "The Rule" and it was about a character who explained that she only went to movies that met three criteria:
1. Two of the characters had to be women --
2. Who talked with each other --
3. About something other than a man.
Read the original strip for yourself. At the time, "The Rule" had a big impact on my life -- it explained a lot about what I found lacking in movies. I wanted to watch strong action heroines, but I also wanted to see movies with women who talked about ordinary stuff that didn't involve boyfriends or husbands.
Backwards in Heels: An Introduction
Filed under: Critical Thought », Quentin Tarantino »
"Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels."
In graduate school, I had a roommate get all over my case for videotaping a Pedro Almodovar movie I'd seen the year before and wanted to watch again, Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (pictured above). She asked me to please not watch it when she was in the apartment. "I don't see how you can possibly want to watch something that is so degrading to women," she told me. She was also disgusted that I liked Midnight, the 1939 movie in which a female character says she doesn't disapprove of a man beating his wife.
A few years later, I was having lunch with a female coworker and told her the story about how I loved A Clockwork Orange so much the first time I saw it, that I went back to the theater the next night to watch it again. And once I went to the Paramount to see it when I had a fever of 102. She looked at me like I was insane. "I didn't know I had a fever at the time," I explained. "It's not that," she said. "But you liked A Clockwork Orange? I wouldn't see it myself, I heard it's terribly misogynistic." "Well, yes ... but it's very good," I replied. And this week, acquaintances have been giving me the hairy eyeball because I admitted to liking a movie advertised with a poster featuring a woman in chains: Black Snake Moan.
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