Female movie reviewers.
I admit to a certain fondness for reading movie reviews, especially for movies I may never see. I’m an unabashed fan of Roger Ebert’s, and generally appreciate his insights. That being said, however, I predicted that his first words on the "Sex and the City" movie would be something to the effect of, "I’m not the target market for this movie."
Bingo .
Curious, I scanned the Google roundup page for reviews of the movie. It seems that there’s a definite gender split between the men and women – women mostly appreciating the movie for all the things the show brought us: witty dialogue, a return visit to characters we had grown to love, and a hefty dollop of high-fashion wish-fulfillment. The men mostly found it shallow (that word shows up a lot) and admitted that since they hadn’t been viewers of the show, they weren’t privy to the back story. I may be reading too much into the reviews I have read, but there seems to be a sense of unease in those writers – the sense that manliness has had to take its fingers out of its ears and stop singing, "Lalalalala – I don’t hear you!!" and listen to girly stuff that might… Do Something to them. I don’t know what, exactly: make bits fall off?
Should I mention that I am the target market for this movie? Need I mention that I have watched every episode of the series (and on afternoons, home with flu and feeling low, watched again) and enjoyed the series through its ups and downs, its storytelling strengths and weaknesses, the outfits I wouldn’t be caught dead in, and its nuanced and touching portrayals of female friendships? I don’t know. I do know the constant obsessions with shoes and labels always seemed to be more of a running joke in the series than anything else, and yet that is what is deemed "shallow" by so many critics.
So, let’s review. Shoes/fashion: shallow. Cars/guns/robots/spaceships: serious. Besides, what is meant by the label "shallow"? You could also possibly describe these same things as "light" or "entertaining." But those are positive adjectives – ones that the reviewer might use to say, "Hey – go see it. It’s fun!" Instead, we get an adjective that says, "Save your money – this is unserious content, unworthy of your notice or money."
Shallow implies waste. And waste implies guilt. And woe be to you who enjoy such frivolity.
My friend Jacob has gone to town on the term "guilty pleasure" and excoriates it in a way that I have been chewing on ever since I first read it:
I hate that phrase "guilty pleasure" more than anything, because it’s a contradiction in terms and seems really self-hating and self-defeating to me, but more than that, I think the one thing you will always get crapped on for is honestly loving — much less rigorously reading — something that’s so heavily feminized, because to be blunt, we devalue women’s experience.
Yes. Yes, we do. Women will never be criticized for enjoying a "Die Hard" movie (heck, the first one has Alan Rickman in it – who am I to cavil at enjoying that?), but the term "chick flick" is a derogatory one, and not one a man wants to be associated with. It’s a hoary cliche, and it’s frustrating.
So we’re back to the split: the ones who enjoy are women. The ones who don’t are men. And unfortunately, it seems that there are a lot more men who get paid to watch and opine than women (need I wait while you recover from your shock?). Do the male reviewers have to like it? Heck no – I don’t know if I will like it. But the tediously predictable reasons for why they don’t like it is disturbing, and it saddens me.
As for me, I haven’t seen the movie yet (see here for why). Will I? Pass the popcorn.