Saturday, September 5, 2009

Cosmo Women and 14 Year Old Bbboys

I'm watching High Fidelity for the first time and wondering why I like this movie so much, wondering why so many of my favorite "rom coms" are written from the male perspective. Almost all movies about love seem to find themselves falling back on gender stereotypes, painting each character with broad generalizing strokes in an effort to gain some sort of understanding and insight into why people do the things they do when they do (and don't) love each other. Perhaps rom coms written from the male perspective help to give me insight into which paint buckets the opposite sex uses in its attempts to understand women. (The results usually aren't that shocking.)

With no further ado, my 5.5 (current) favorite movies about adult relationships (adult meaning not about teenagers, as opposed to, you now, adult as in all about the sexy sex):

5.5 L'ultimo bacio
5. The Last Kiss
4. I'm Through with White Girls (The Inevitable Undoing of Jay Brooks)
3. High Fidelity
2. Me and You and Everyone We Know
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

As with anything that's my favorite, this list is bound to no longer be true within minutes. But I'm definitely interested in any suggestions, any passionate disagreements. (I also just realized that *SPOILER* most of these movies have happyish endings.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"Almost all movies about love seem to find themselves falling back on gender stereotypes, painting each character with broad generalizing strokes in an effort to gain some sort of understanding and insight into why people do the things they do when they do (and don't) love each other." I find that the best romantic comedies actually don't do this. "Perhaps rom coms written from the male perspective help to give me insight into which paint buckets the opposite sex uses in its attempts to understand women. (The results usually aren't that shocking.)" You seem to be watching bad romantic comedies. I recommend stopping that, though I do sympathize with you do to how little good there is, but don't blame guys if you see women simplified on screen. I enjoy Apatow films, but that doesn't mean I see myself in them.