In your idea of a perfect world, should this happen to 99% of real people?
The first thing I thought of for this thread is, media starring/made by a celebrity who wasn’t originally of that industry. Then I realized I could think of quite a few counterexamples if I put my mind to it, so I’d say this isn’t an absolute, but I’m often wary when I see it. For example, when I hear about a movie starring Britney, or music made by Jennifer Lopez (remember when she was an actress?), I usually avoid it like the plague.
For a very specific example, every trailer or promo I can remember seeing for anything starring Chris Kattan has pretty much turned me off.
Any story in which a woman is raped by a man*, then either (a) falls in love with him, or at minimum (b) decides she likes it. No, no, no, a thousand times no.
(*) Any other combination of genders would bother me just as much, but I can’t say I’ve ever seen this particular scenario played out any other way.
Outside of freaky anime, when does this ever happen?
Romantic Comedies.
Period Costume Dramas that don’t involve a murder mystery, a war, or humour.
American Flag-Waving Patriotic movies.
Any movie in which the use of Ebonics is a major (and intentional) source of humour.
Anything Joss Wheedon has been anywhere near.
Historical movies that completely disregard or rewrite history purely to appeal to a mass market.
Re-makes of perfectly good films.
Shows and movies in which people with no visible means of employment live like royalty tend to irritate me, too…
I was wondering the same thing.
The closest I can think of is an exchange in Monty Python’s Life of Brian:
Brian: You were raped?!
Brian’s Mother: Well … at first.
I would say that gratuitous violence against men is WAY more common than gratuitous violence against women or children. If it’s designed to establish the character as a gold plated SOB, then it serves a purpose, and is by definition not gratuitous.
I agree about the hot-girl-with-glasses thing, although it hasn’t happened much lately, particularly since it was so mocked in Not Another Teen Movie. A corollary is the much simpler “hot actress who everyone pretends is not hot”, such as Janeane Garafolo in The Truth About Cats and Dogs.
My point was that the film is based on actual events, and that you know the boat’s sinking. Thus, I can’t get into the film.
My point was that the film is (loosely) based on actual events, and that you know the boat’s sinking. Thus, I can’t get into the film.
Laura fell in love with Luke on General Hospital after he raped her, 2 decades or so ago.
And Achilles fell in love with Penthesilia, queen of the amazons, after he killed her on the battlefield–though Marion Zimmer Bradlley opined that he merely
raped her corpse to demonstrate his contempt for female warriors.
Remakes of classic television or old movies;
Any cast member SNL except Bill Murray and maybe Will Ferrel;
Tom Hanks;
Steve Martin (what happened to him?);
Movies that are based on comic books;
Robin Williams;
Well, no, but real people don’t tend to be as whiny, bitchy, or passive-aggressive as the characters I keep running into while reading Pat’s novels–well, at least not the people I’ve seen. I read Lords of Discipline, and I just shake my head at Will’s idiocy. I read Prince of Tides, and I find myself wanting to scream at everyone “GET A GRIP! YOU’VE GOT PROBLEMS. Ignoring the problems hasn’t seemed to work the first 37 years of your lives, so why don’t you try actually dealing with them?”
It’s like 3/4 of his characters just stumble around life in their own private hell, and they need some weird conspiracy or hyper-violent father, or 500 pages of exposition and backstory to actually get off the couch and do something about it.
Whew, sorry for the rant. I needed to get that off my chest. Can you tell I don’t like Conroy’s novels very much? Sure I know people like this, but not a lot of people, and I don’t like them very much. I just don’t find passive aggression a compelling plot device.
Well, for a fairly famous example, there’s The Fountainhead…(though it could be argued that it wasn’t really rape because it was pretty obvious that Dominique wanted Roark to do it).
Boxing Helena?
For my girlfriend, if one of the main characters gets killed in the movie, that’s a dealbreaker for her. She likes movies that are upbeat…
I would imagine it happens in a lot of Lifetime movies as well.
I would imagine it happens in a lot of Lifetime movies as well, but women falling in love with their rapists is a common symptom that plagues romance novels. I’m not the target audience (straight male over here), but I don’t see how women can read those.
I understand this. It’s not even a matter of being upbeat. I can deal with it if they kill off important people. But i feel robbed when they take time to make me like/love a major character and then go kill her off. It’s a cheap play on my emotions and it infuriates me.
Straw Dogs.
This bothered me with respect to Pay it Forward. Granted, it wasn’t a great flick to begin with…
killing the kid at the end just to make the film “deep” was just glurgy garbage.