Ruin your favourite books/films with a spot of feminist analysis

[ElephantsAndMiasmas]

Got thinking about this on another thread where I was wittering talking cleverly about the problems I have with Bridget Jones's Diary (the book, the problem with the film is that stuffy faced plonker Firth).

One of her boyfriends is a total cheating dickhead, obviously. But the "nice" one, Mark Darcy, is incredibly patronising towards her, repeatedly "rescuing" her because he wants to fuck her. Which is all well and good, but whereas in Pride and Prejudice (the origin of BJD) Darcy has a lot of respect for the female protagonist, which she earns by being smart, witty, standing up for herself etc, BJD removes that whole side of her. When she stands up for herself it is something she later apologises for.

Anyway - anyone else want to join me?

Awwww Wreck - but the 'dance out the back of the ball' scene is so romantic

PortBlack - and Robert Browning. Porphyria's Lover is deeply creepy.

RibenaBerry Tombliboo Un is male. Oo and Ee are female. Which I suppose renforces the gender hierarchy :).

It's not her first night in Pretty Woman, but iirc it is her first night in her new wig, which might be causing some confusion.

ROFL Trubert

Port - Oh, how fabulous. I have never seen the stageplay, just the film. In the film, she is definitely singing about Kenickie. She is all on her own and there is this footage of him all carefree.

I love Stockard Channing and this has always grated. From now on, I shall decree that she didn't know how they were going to put that scene together when she filmed it as was furious when she saw. Rizzo, you are reprieved [bangs gavel].

Gosh, confusing. Just read Wikipedia (never wrong!) and it says Eee is female, just Eee. I will have to go back to DSs books for proof.

ROFL at Un, Oo, and Ee. Is that supposed to be one, two, three?

Wreck - I sooo agree! That other woman is perfectly nice.

Romancing the Stone has that city girl in the jungle vibe too iirc.

not just snow white - almost all the older versions of fairytales are horrible through a feminist lense (and sometimes just plain horrible!)

I went through a phase in my teens of reading truly dire books about northern lasses (with whimsical expressions on the cover) who get abused / pregnant / husband spends all money in the pub / pick up coals from the road with their bare nipples / sail to Australia / clean the grate / front door step / find older friend / older friend dies / husband leaves / rich bastard gets them pregnant again / rich bastard ignores them / they sleep in a ditch / put the kettle on / say eeeh and ooooh alot.

They were truly dire from a feminist perspective....the women accepted everything thrown at them and the men spoke in a dialect you could only skip read.

Anyone else guilty of this?

No, but I did read 'Flowers in the Attic' - mother locks up children to please new husband. That's a newish slant on Hansel and Gretel with the woman as villan. Can't decide if she's abused or just evil (and I'm not reading it again to find out).

This thread reminds me of my student days I wrote an essay on feminist critique of film - loads on Fatal Attraction and Thelma and Louise.

I hate FA - the whole storyline culminating in punishing the mad 'bunny boiler' intent on fucking Michael Douglas and destroying his family. While he gets to stay with his wife she gets murdered twice, first by him then by his wife - originally the film ended with Glenn Close killing herself in the bath to M. Butterfly, however audience testing led to the end being changed so she was not treated so 'sympathetically' but instead punished (twice) for her sins.

The same thing happened to Thelma and Louise - audience testing (and no doubt pressure from the studio bosses) led the film makers to change the original ending - T and L sipping cocktails in a Mexican bar - to a more ambiguous leap of cliff in to certain death unknown!

i have always liked the long kiss goodnight, because i like the thought that she regains her memory and turns superkiller. i don't like the way she has to smoke and down shots and change her hair to be her true self, but i love the character. is it allowed as a good film?

Dangerous Liasons:

To my shame, this was one of my all time favourite films:

Utter utter scumbag of a man manages to

1. seduce a faithful woman, and kill her (dies of broken heart)
2. Rape, impregnate and debauch a schoolgirl for sport.
3. Posthumously publish salacious correspondence with his female protagonist resulting in HER being shunned by society.

Mad Men:
managed to watch series 1. Cannot face downloading/buying any more. Does it get any less mysogynistic?

P and L as I lived in the North for most of my childhood and for Uni I felt no need to read romanticised versions of it - I had loved Angela Carter books as a teen (still do). But I do remember reading 'Daddy Long Legs' - basically orphan has her education paid for by mysterious benefactor she writes to him and names him 'Daddy Long Legs'. She goes to Uni and has various flirtations with an older man whom she later marries and it turns out he was 'Daddy' all along (not biologically but still!) - ick... but I loved it at the time. I think a film was made as well...

I read that Bigmouth - I loved it right up until the point where you realise her "daddy" is jealous, and then she marries him!

There's an excellent book called "Good Girl Messages" which had a bit about that. A whole chapter on prone heroines, IIRC, and another chapter on marrying your father/brother equivalent.

Bigmouth- God that's depressing. I loved most of Thelma and Louise, but would have loved it more if they had been sipping cocktails in Mexico at the end!

Oh I loved Dangerous Liasons mainly due to Glenn Close and John Malkovitch they are amazing Michelle Pffeifer was passable but it was a dull role basically an archetype not a person.

It is wholly due to her performance that I feel sorry for Glenn Close at the end even if you are not meant to and think Michelle and John got off easy by dying romantically.

It's a movie* requirement that the "Troublesome Woman" has to die.

Fatal Attraction, Thelma and Louise, oh and the most notorious one is Sharon Stone in Total Recall, killed by her "husband" with the line "Consider that a divorce."

Also was it Prizzi's Honour, when Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas were rival hit men hired to kill each other? Of course, she's the one who gets killed.

• Not just movies of course. There's the first Mrs Rochester and many others which I can't recall at the moment due to a dirty nappy wafting stenchfully for my attention from another room.

Yes. That's another reason to like studio ghibli - they rarely if ever kill off their villains (of whom many are female).

Portblacksand - do you mean Catherine Cookson, or something more modern?

love the phrase 'Smurfette effect'. Smurfs were one of the first things that turned me into a feminist - when my brothers got to choose from a wide selection of Fireman Smurf, Clown Smurf, Car Mechanic Smurf, Elderly Authority Figure Smurf, and I got bloody Smurfette with her silly stuck-on blonde hair. (God, how othering was that hair?)

Back from school...

I was so sure it was her first night in Pretty Woman - can't bear to watch it again to check though.

seth - nothing as 'good' as Cookson more like (but not specifically) <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n19/n97719.jpg&imgrefurl=www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/j/anna-jacobs/our-mary-ann.htm&usg=__Pf8Pz9DD5EzngiV6VzrTGA2MeXk=&h=475&w=303&sz=20&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=HCzblDczaPCZeM:&tbnh=169&tbnw=112&prev=/images%3Fq%3Danna%2Bjacobs%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D643%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=347&vpy=55&dur=380&hovh=281&hovw=179&tx=69&ty=152&ei=72vdTJ78IqaAhAeA8_naDA&oei=72vdTJ78IqaAhAeA8_naDA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this and <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=www.annajacobs.com/images/fullcovers/f_likeno.jpg&imgrefurl=www.annajacobs.com/book.asp%3FpageID%3D14&usg=__cjf4Tvymaf7CYfEuiM_ukbICWLE=&h=400&w=550&sz=97&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=7_v8HM8v0osPQM:&tbnh=169&tbnw=230&prev=/images%3Fq%3Danna%2Bjacobs%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D643%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=750&vpy=96&dur=54&hovh=191&hovw=263&tx=84&ty=154&ei=72vdTJ78IqaAhAeA8_naDA&oei=72vdTJ78IqaAhAeA8_naDA&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=20&ved=1t:429,r:4,s:0" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">this

Incidently typing in historical romance novels bring up this image <a class="break-all" href="http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=forladiesbyladies.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/image001.gif&imgrefurl=www.historical-romance.org/&usg=__LY1XR77QDxcSl5PpQlvBJaonTz8=&h=288&w=384&sz=80&hl=en&start=72&zoom=1&tbnid=54IzqD8V4M8K8M:&tbnh=155&tbnw=209&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dhistorical%2Bromance%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1366%26bih%3D643%26tbs%3Disch:10,1585&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=648&vpy=275&dur=3910&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=81&ty=116&ei=S2vdTNXyNs3v4gbs0qHQDw&oei=ImvdTOnbB52ShAeG6onVDA&esq=6&page=4&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:10,s:72&biw=1366&bih=643" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">here which just about sums everything up nicely...