How feminist views change as you get older

[Michelleoftheresistance]

Or films that make you go hmm....

I remember being shown several key women's films while I was doing A levels and at university, in one case studying women writers. Shirley Valentine was one, Educating Rita was another. I got the general key messages at the time: women trying to escape the stereotypes to be more, to be allowed to be themselves, to seek their own fulfilment instead of someone else's, the unfairness of societal roles.

I saw Educating Rita again a few days ago, not having seen it in decades, and it was like watching a completely different film. For a start, when I first saw it as a teenager, I saw Rita as a mature student, an adult much older than me, where I watch it now and think she's early twenties, she's so young and there's vulnerability there I hadn't seen.

But the key message of that film for me watching it now is a triangle of incompetent males who were certain they could be happy if they could force Rita to be who they wanted. Her abusive father, her horrible husband, the creepy professor. All males, incapable of taking responsibility for themselves or their problems, trying to compel a woman to turn herself in to what they needed to fix them, and punishing her when she didn't do it right or it didn't work, or she dared to have boundaries.

Totally different insights. And don't get me started on My Fair Lady....

Has anyone else found their perspectives have shifted radically with different stages in their lives?

@WrathFaeKlopp I always hated all those blokes who thought it was funny to ridicule Mary Whitehouse! As a teen, trying to understand the world, I sort of saw where she was coming from.

I always thought Austen's point was that both the Bennet parents were problems in their own way. Like Jack Sprat and his wife. The girls had to largely find their own way because of it.

I think the role of love in self-actualisation is one of the big stories, and people will always be interested in spousal type partnerships. It's something that's important to most people, and most people are "heteronormative".
Though I think one thing that is interesting is that in a secularised society, what in previous eras might have been a story about finding some kind of purpose or union beyond the concrete, has now in many cases transferred that journey almost wholly to romantic union. So where a character like Dante shows a platonic journey where romantic love and other things play a part but the goal , once you get to the novels like P&P, or Tom Jones in the early modern period, the platonic ascent always ends in marriage. Which presumably isn't meant to be realistic, but even as an ideal it quite a load for it to carry.

I just enjoyed Madame Bovary without judgement when I was a teen. On rereading it, I thought she was a stupid, vain and selfish person. I hated how she was with her child and how she fell for any passing bellend.

My only sympathy with her lies with what little opportunity for betterment or excitement you could have as a woman. Once married you weren't free, you depended on your husband for your fate and fortune.

I think you are denying Rita agency OP - she wasn't a pawn of men, she was a woman who actively shaped her world.

It's a very fair point.

I was just struck by shifting from seeing the film as about all about Rita and class and having sympathy with all the characters involved and their different POVs - being a nice and well socialised youngster I suppose - to seeing the film from a completely different angle and realising how much she is fighting from every man in her life, even the one you could argue is her rescuer. She is strong enough not to let any of them do it, but all of them try.

Austen really nailed the challenges of women in different circumstances - Charlotte in P&P marrying and encouraging him to spend as much time as possible in his garden (day and night if possible), because what else was there for her? And poor Miss Bates in Emma, the living fate of a daughter who hadn't found marriage, and trapped by class.

Whoopi Goldberg is always a good think afaic

She's very entertaining in her movies, but I was disappointed that she defended Roman Polanski because -in her words- "it wasn't RAPE rape."

One effect of my growing feminism (which I've learnt more and more about since I was an older teenager) is that once the scales fell from my eyes, I've been awfully disappointed by celebrities and authors I used to admire.

I was living in an all-women commune when I was 22, reading literature at university and writing essays from a Marxist-feminist perspective. We had book reading discussions at home and Dworkin was our godess. I always loathed romantic comedies, always critiqued every film for lack of credible women characters and made seminars unbearable for the other students with my single-minded application of radical feminist analysis.

Then I got saddled with a man-baby husband and lost twenty years pampering men. I felt I'd abandoned feminism, but when I looked up my old mate, found 3rd wave dick-pandering.

Now I'm single, doing the job I love, rereading Dworkin and coming back to myself. I'm raging about injustice and misogyny. Sad I wasted a good chunk of my life bothering with men, but glad i woke up in time.

oh yes that's the other thing - disdain for all celebs now. Emma Thompson also jumped on the Roman Polanski bandwagon then jumped off it when she realised it wasn't on brand. I can't bear reading celeb profiles in magazines now - why on earth do we think actors and musicians have anything insightful to say? Their job is not to be insightful or knowledgeable. Their job is to entertain - they should stick to that and we should stop paying them any attention.

Not specific films so much as general cultural nausea.

I loved magazines as a child and teenager - they were a window onto a wider world that seemed glamorous. I was about 14 when Brooke Shields became a star, she's a similar age to me. The blatant use of paedophile-pleasing adverts by her mother and agents to sell her seemed fantastic to me at that age ('Can you believe I'm only 14?' She was a bit older when 'nothing comes between me and my Calvins' came out) but now I see the endless articles that used to be published about 'the permissive society' were excuses to publish pictures of sexualised female children in a world where Savile was operating semi openly because he was considered to have some kind of cultural youth passport. A version of 'feminism' was created that was about women becoming more visible provided that they were more naked and younger. Women with actual power - and there were starting to be some - were tolerated only if they would accept this discourse of sexual liberation of fuckable females to 'degrade themselves' as the only type of female 'liberation' that was allowed. Even that was never true sexual liberation; look at how disposable the victims of the grooming gangs were.

There has been a reaction to this and some of it is positive. But so many girls and women have suffered and continue to do so. I don't think a puritan reaction is the answer though.

I was just struck by shifting from seeing the film as about all about Rita and class and having sympathy with all the characters involved and their different POVs - being a nice and well socialised youngster I suppose - to seeing the film from a completely different angle and realising how much she is fighting from every man in her life, even the one you could argue is her rescuer. She is strong enough not to let any of them do it, but all of them try

That's interesting. I didn't have any sympathy for her husband or parents at all - and bear in mind I first saw this when I was a teenager and still at school. But then, I was Rita and desperate to escape. I didn't and don't find Frank creepy at all. I actually thought that theirs was a fairly equal relationship, until, in the end, Rita does have the power. Maybe this is because I've seen what real life Franks can and do inflict on vulnerable young women students. The narrative that was last interesting to me was the one where he let her go and was genuinely proud of her, knowing that she did it and it wasn't 'his' success. I'm not even sure this is about sex or gendered relations. I think it is more about teachers and boundaries. I haven't watched it for probably five or so years now. I don't know what I'd get out of it if I did.

Oh - and I do think that she was fighting the men - and this is rather one of the positives of the film - the fact that she is fighting.

I'd love a world where we don't have to fight, but I think that's a different film.

On the back of this thread I watched (half of) educating Rita again last night. The relationship between Frank and Rita is fancinating, I think she has the upper hand from the start really. He is surprised that he can't bully- control her as he does Julia. She isn't trying to save him.

I find now I am in my late fifties whenever I re-read Germaine Greer's The Whole Woman I just accept it and don't find it depressing whereas when I read it in my thirties it would make me feel really miserable. Nowadays I just accept it as the stark reality for women and I am too disinterested in relationships with men to let it affect me...! I guess I must have come to terms with male inadequacies from 15 years of single parenting my ds....

She isn't trying to save him

You may have something there... !!!

I must rewatch.

I was living in an all-women commune when I was 22, reading literature at university and writing essays from a Marxist-feminist perspective. We had book reading discussions at home and Dworkin was our godess

Then I got saddled with a man-baby husband and lost twenty years pampering men. I felt I'd abandoned feminism, but when I looked up my old mate, found 3rd wave dick-pandering

So is feminism just an impractical theory then? Like Marxism?

I have never read any feminist theory in my life but I'm kind of surprised that it takes some sort of feminist enlightenment before posters spot that things like Grease or Pretty Woman were sexist rubbish. And I'm sorry you wasted 20 years but it doesn't sound as if the Dworkin Marxist literature was much of a help in real life.

I was about 14 when Brooke Shields became a star

I was 19 when Pretty Baby was released. Brooke Shields was 12. I'll never understand how it got made or that her mother, Teri Shield, Susan Sarandon and Keith Carradine went along with it.

"He is surprised that he can't bully- control her as he does Julia. "

How does he control Julia? She's having an affair under his nose!?

Their relationship started as tutor/tutee. The way he speaks about her as a "sweet, kind, girl". She is having an affair but I see that as a last attempt to get his attention.

Love Actually

I was about 13 when it was released. I thought it was a lovely, Christmassy film with interesting interconnecting characters. Now I despair at all the females and the fact their entire story arches depend entirely on what the male thinks of them. That's all the validation they get (or don't) bllahhhhh

"She is having an affair but I see that as a last attempt to get his attention."

I didn't see that in the film at all. It's quite a presumption. I think she just lost interest in him.

I completely agree about radical feminism ruining beloved films - I have to watch them with a kind of mental “this is a period piece” caveat.

I mean, Pierce Brosnan is portrayed as a sort of baddie in Mrs Doubtfire but he probably would have been a decent stepfather.

Having said that, I find myself just as despairing / furious about many recent films, especially some that are touted as feminist.

I saw Wonder Woman recently and couldn’t believe it - the film spends ten minutes on Bechdel Island, after which it’s an almost 100% sausage fest (except for poor Lucy Davis who plays a sort of “fat best friend” type character who is only there to goggle at how beautiful WW is). The main character is an actual goddess, therefore totally unrelatable. She’s also a perfect fantasy - gorgeous, virginal, innocent, powerful but entirely able to be tamed by a man. Oh and she loves babies and trying on kinchy little outfits! To cap it all, male violence is given a complete pass as their poor little brains are apparently being addled by the god Aries, and that’s why wars happen. It’s not their fault!

It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that comic book fan boys love that film and hate Captain Marvel. Captain Marvel to me is the radical feminist movie, compared with Wonder Woman being very liberal feminist.

There’s no male gaze in Captain Marvel, the plot is essentially about how women are gaslighted (both on a cultural level and individually), there are good portrayals of the real struggles of career and motherhood and no romantic plotlines at all.

Fanboys tend to claim they don’t like romance subplots because they’re boring, but I think subconsciously they really struggle with the idea of women who don’t fall for a man, or aren’t portrayed as sexy and alluring. It’s a true independence they just can’t stomach. Wonder Woman falls in love with a mortal man, which to the audience (presumed male) means she’s attainable and tamed. They dismiss Captain Marvel as “bland”, but I think what they really mean is “not sexy”.

Whatever the various merits of the films in terms of quality (I think they both have good and bad points), I can’t see what else explains the visceral hatred some people seem to have towards Captain Marvel. I thought it was pretty good, and very refreshing.

Grease or Pretty Woman were sexist rubbish.

Some of us posting on here were very young when these came out. They were part of our patriarchal determination alongside all the other visual representations of what it was to be female. Feminist discourses were the only ones exposing this stuff. You may not have read any feminist theory but you use the word ‘sexist’. Where do you think that word arose from?

didn't see that in the film at all. It's quite a presumption. I think she just lost interest in him

Yes. I don't think that the film really makes a value judgement here. It just portrays something that is sadly common in academic life and Frank comes off looking pretty bad. There is no attempt to demonise Julia as there could have been in more sexist portrayals.

Some of us posting on here were very young when these came out

I was 18 when Grease came out. It was glaringly obvious how awful it was.

The film suggests that Julia has given up trying to find satisfaction in her relationship with Frank, who is mostly preoccupied by his drinking and wallowing in his own disdain for the life he's leading - not that he's actually prepared to summon up the effort to do anything about it. He comes over as lazy, something that Rita points out to him. He's aware Julia is having an affair under his nose, he doesn't really care one way or the other.

When Rita comes along she re sparks his interest, she is refreshing, but even then he wants her to be who he wants and to do things the way he wants, for her to limit herself under his control: he doesn't do well when she demonstrates that she chooses her own path and won't limit herself or fit into the box he wants her to get in.

Does radical feminism destroy enjoyment of films and stories because it makes you aware of the casual normality of media messages about what female people should be and do and the overwhelming importance of the male people? Or is it just life experience that makes you start thinking, this bloke who is supposed to be complex and fascinating and/or tragic is actually an irresponsible mess and why would any sensible female get involved outside co-dependency issues?

I'm actually curious to know what you want from this mid-1980s film Michelle? Frank is shown as flawed, there is no attempt to make him glamorous or to excuse his shitty behaviour, and Rita is shown as naive on one level, but self-aware and savvy and she carves her own path. She is a role-model, surely? It's not a rad fem fairy story, but it shows a fantastic woman. What would you have done differently?