OscarGuy wrote:My problem with the kind of "poor portraits of women" recognition is that it should be reserved for films that aren't historical in context. And if they'd actually SEEN Lust, Caution, they would have realized how whether they used her or not, she made the decisions and she let her love control her destiny, which seems quite female empowering to me.
It's perhaps better to post this reply onto the LUST, CAUTION thread instead but since it's my direct response to this posting ...
I'm more inclined to think along the line of how several HK film critics' odd but brilliant interpretation of the character - that Wang Jiazhi enjoys vanity/peacockery, from the moment that she plays the young girl's role in the play and enjoys being the center of everybody's attention. She makes that ultimate decision because she suddenly realizes that if the man dies, she will have to go back to her real self. Lee and his writers saw through what the real intention of Eileen Chang (who wrote the short story that the film is based on) - to create a flawed character in such a subtle way that everybody thought that the character makes the decision merely for love. And therefore, he hinted this point all over the film with his equally subtle directing. I watched the film twice and discovered all these hints.
Still, I don't think such a portrayal is female-bashing. It's just a flaw in personality.
Damien....i would like you to explain that....i know your a huge fan of the director.....i won't put the director in same class as you do but in a lot of ways i've never been more pleased with him than when i was watching this film. At the same time i think he failed in a lot of ways and this film could have been a whole lot better, which frustrated the hell out of me because i couldn't have been more on board with what he was trying to say....so for me it was very hard because i wanted to give the man a high five and at the same time i wanted to say damn man you dropped the ball....but again thats just me and its hard to find others who have seen it, so i'd love to hear your thoughts.
I'm sorry--My wife is this Liberated woman since 1970, and she knows women who actually think this kind of news( Women's Awards) actually means something. They are all 70 like we are. I personally think these awards for gender or sex are absurd.
The categories are ridiculous: they give Cate Blanshett an Award to make the whole exercise appear to be legitimate?
Hairspray is as much about racial discrimination as it is about gender and weight discrimination. And since it happens to be a fat chick, then that's why they say it's positive because she wins in the end.
My problem with the kind of "poor portraits of women" recognition is that it should be reserved for films that aren't historical in context. And if they'd actually SEEN Lust, Caution, they would have realized how whether they used her or not, she made the decisions and she let her love control her destiny, which seems quite female empowering to me.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Steph2 wrote:I've never actually watched it, but isn't that the whole offensive basis for Luke and Laura on General Hospital? One of the reasons I refuse to watch this "super couple."
Yes, Luke and Laura is the classic example of a rape storyline turning into a popular supercouple. In this case, however, it was really the electricity and connection between the two actors onscreen and the fanbase that made the writers realize they'd backed themselves up into a corner with the rape. To their credit, they didn't just brush it under the rug like it never happened. It's been addressed in various ways throughout the years, most famously, when Lucky, Luke and Laura's son, discovered the truth about how his parents first met and confronted his father about it.
More recently, Days of Our Lives has gone a similar route with EJ and Sami, representatives of the long-feuding DiMera and Brady families. The two were initially drawn together and shared a mutual attraction. EJ then raped Sami, impregnating her with twins (well, actually each twin turned out to have a different father -- of course, this is a soap!), and Sami ended up having to marry her rapist in order to fulfill the terms of ending the feud between their families. She now admits that she still has "feelings" for him, despite what he did to her, something causing a bit of online uproar in various forums. James Scott and Alison Sweeney have an unbelievable chemistry which also has a strong and vocal fanbase. In this case, the important issue of rape is the casualty, and the audience is asked to accept that a woman, even under these outlandish circumstances, would actually marry her own rapist.
Penelope wrote:Precisely; in fact--and not to derail this thread with soap talk--but Cady McClain has an interview in the current issue of Soap Opera Weekly discussing her upcoming departure from ATWT (she plays Rosanna) and vents her fury at the show's inability to portray strong women, and the soap genre in general for portraying women so poorly in the last few years (and, for the most part, I think she's right--it IS one of the failings of the genre in the past few years, part of the reason the ratings have plummeted).
I absolutely agree with this, Penelope. Soap operas have long since lost the thread on the advent of the sexual revolution, still writing these soaps for an early 1970's audience. Outdated views on abortion, cartoonish depictions of homosexual characters (Luke and Noah, notwithstanding), and worst of all, misoginstic portrayals of women abound. The writers mistakenly believe that their audience yearns to see traditional (read: archaic) storylines play out where the male character takes control over the "damsel-in-distress", dominating and protecting neutered and disempowered female charcters. Women, in turn, are written as sexually-dependent slatterns enslaved by their own libidos, constant perma-victims, raped and re-raped in both a literal and figurative fashion, or thoroughly unrootable glittery ice queen virgins shoved down the audience's throat as "heroines".
For example, on ATWT, purportedly strong female characters (Lily, Rosanna, Carly) all use their considerable wit and wile to underhandedly secure their "true loves". These are intelligent, well-connected, and in the case of Lily and Rosanna, financially stable, wealthy women. Yet they use all these resources to what? Blackmail, trick and bribe their way into some man's bed? Any feminist would find this almost Victorian in nature.
There are some soaps that do a better job than others in their portrayals of secure, independent women who have as much power as the most powerful male character on their show. On Y&R, Katherine Chancellor is arguably more rich and powerful than the great Victor Newman. Never presented as a weak character (her only known weakness is for alcohol and her love for her dead husband), Katherine makes things happen with the snap of a finger and is recognized by almost everyone in the town as a women who won't back down from anything or anyone, even her own daughter trying to steal her husband. Similarly, Jill Abbott, her longtime rival as well as her long-lost daughter (revealed to her years later), is the hard-nosed scrapper who came from nothing and became the president of the top cosmetics company in the country. And how do the writers choose to employ these rich, dynamic and powerful women? Set dressing with the occasional storyline. It's absolutely criminal.
Edited By flipp525 on 1199823109
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
I've never actually watched it, but isn't that the whole offensive basis for Luke and Laura on General Hospital? One of the reasons I refuse to watch this "super couple."
Penelope wrote:he rapes her, but she comes back for more.
That's a storyline on almost every soap opera I've ever seen.
Precisely; in fact--and not to derail this thread with soap talk--but Cady McClain has an interview in the current issue of Soap Opera Weekly discussing her upcoming departure from ATWT (she plays Rosanna) and vents her fury at the show's inability to portray strong women, and the soap genre in general for portraying women so poorly in the last few years (and, for the most part, I think she's right--it IS one of the failings of the genre in the past few years, part of the reason the ratings have plummeted).
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
I'm sure the fact that the fully-empowered Tang Wei in Lust, Caution is being used by the anti-Japanese forces to seduce a man is disrespectful. They're saying that men of power only see women as tools...But how can a historically-representative film, written by a woman for fuck's sake, be demonized...
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Damien wrote:I'm thrilled for anything good that comes to Brian De Palma's Redacted -- the denigration of this film (by the same people who declare Ratatouille an important work of art) completely baffles me.
I'd like to hear you expand on this idea, without the comparison to cartoons, that is.
