Strat wrote:Joey, Im really sorry. I do think you are vastly overstating the importance of this film for women, much like LV vastly overstated the cultural importance of Batman V Superman. They are wonderful comics and hilarious women and talented actors, albeit one trick ponies, but I didnt get the sense that these women were changing the role of women in modern cinema. Also, they did just hire the secretary because he was hot and they were drooling over him.
This is a tricky thing for me to talk about in a coherent way. And I'm not sure why. But it's not that the movie itself is a feminist manifesto. Or that it set out to change minds and advance women. The women in the movie probably didn't sit there and think what they were doing was anything greater than what they were doing: trying to tell some jokes and make a fucking Ghostbusters movie.
The movie won't change lives. The movie won't change Hollywood by itself. It's clear from the regularity of this conversation that it missed. The trick of it is, I'm not sure it knew it was even aiming.
As far as the last sentence you posted up there goes, that's part of the point. It's a classic example of turning shit on its head. But the revolutionary part comes from the fact that none of the women sleep with him, actively try to sleep with him, cry in a pint of ice cream because they can't sleep with him, wear fewer closes around him to seduce him, dumb themselves down to gain access to him, bend who they are to please a man. That's the shit that we see time and time and time again from women in comedies. It's not one thing they are doing or one thing the film is doing, it's the total of the parts. They avoid so many usual tropes, things that are so much a part of cinema that we (men especially) don't even notice them anymore and/or don't think of them as troublesome.
The fact that women are saying they've never seen other women represented on film this way before is huge. And shouldn't be understated. I wish the movie had been better. I wish the movie had made more money. It's not enough to show women differently on screen, you have to make money doing it or else Hollywood isn't going to get the message.
I appreciated what the movie did and I laughed my ass off. And I wanted to watch it again as soon as I got home. Maybe it won't hold up well over time. But I really enjoyed it. Anyone who disagrees with me isn't wrong, they just disagree. And that's totally fine.
I'm glad you spent the money to see it in theaters, buddy. Sorry you didn't like it more.
