Homo-Erotic Misogyny at the Movies
I watched "Eastern Promises" last night. It was absorbing, in a made-for-tv movie-of-the-week kind of way, with plot holes as big as a President's ego, and a lot of sexploitation.
But I have a bias against anything to do with David Cronenberg because years ago I was at a party and people were talking about "Dead Ringers" and the conversation became quite pretentious and filmy in that way movie connoisseur conversations do, and some drunken hosebeast of a reveller, searching for the last cold beer in the fridge (I always left the warm stuff for the boys - they'll drink anything) piped up, "I think David Cronenberg is just a misogynist!"
I stand by that opinion, too.
But I think a lot of Hollywood movies are misogynistic, probably because most Hollywood writers and directors are misogynists. So it'd be a scant selection for your viewing pleasure if I was in charge of what you could and could not see, that's for sure. Believe me, as a Feminist, watching almost any Hollywood production with my kids drives me clear and clean out of my mind because the sexism in America is so ingrained, so pervasive, so rampant - that virtually every movie is based on women being there for the pleasure of men.
As a Feminist, I'm pretty much sick of it.
Indeed, according to Hollywood, if it weren't for just a handful of good men who speak in monosyllables (because women, not men, find that so attractive in a partner), women would be enslaved by the evil laughing closet-cases who comprise most of mankind, to be raped over and over and over, before being murdered at their (and your?) further viewing pleasure, their naked corpses given one last going over by a lingering camera close-up.
Ah, women in the movies. Even their sexuality isn't enough to save them in the end.
Well, I'm not buying it. The emperor ain't wearin' any clothes, as far as I'm concerned. It's all just misogyny with a thick coating of homo-eroticism - what I'm seeing up there on the big screen - and from here on in I'm boycotting the whole shebang - or shegangbang, as so often is the case in Hollywoodland.
