Misogyny and pop culture: don't yuck my yum! (Spoilers for the movie Poor Things)

The BBQ Pit
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I continue to be pissed off about an interaction hours later, so what better choice then drop it to the pit.

tl;dr version: @DSeid and @Eyebrows_0f_Doom each take up aspects of the all-too-common position that if you think there’s some systemic misogyny in art, then you’re probably wrong, and you probably think no one should be allowed to say anything, and who gave you the right to tell me anything about anything anyway. And ur dumb. Also, some of my best friens are women, and they disagree with you.

There’s a movie, Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, whose plot is described as: “The incredible tale about the fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter.” (imdb) … or, “the plot follows Bella Baxter, a young woman in Victorian London, who is resurrected by a scientist following her suicide by jumping off a cliff and embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery.” (wikipedia).

There is a thread in Cafe Society, in which there are a few differing perspectives on the film. I contributed that based on my understanding about the film along with some of what I read in that thread, it seemed like a movie with a lot of “male gaze wrapped in liberated feminism clothing”, and I probably wouldn’t watch it. My exact words:

The immediate response was:

And then:

That whole thing got my ire way up, and there’s a little bit of brief back and forth (which you can read in the original thread) before @puzzlegal rightfully calls a halt.

But you know what? I’m sick and tired of even the suggestion that a darling piece of art might have problematic or sexist or racist elements built in being met with borderline personal attacks.

There’s a lot of discussion out there about this movie, and a lot of opinions about its positioning as a piece of feminist art and whether that rings true. A quick google, or a quick read of the wikipedia, or a quick scouring a a handful of reviews will show you that. And yet, bring that up here, and we get almost completely ad hominem arguments and OMG ARE YOU SAYING MEN CAN’T MAKE MOOOOOVIES!?!? straw men.

This is a frustratingly clear example of why ‘progress’ takes so long. Suggest that a piece of art has some problematic elements, and you can count the seconds until Defenders of Culture show up and start freaking the fuck out that someone somewhere thinks that the thing they like has aspects worth being critical of.

Then, dismiss the intellect and character of the person who made them feel so threatened in hopes that the person will go away and leave them be.

All of which is in response not to me saying “this is a bad movie” or “this is a misogynistic movie” but simply “I haven’t seen it and am skeptical whether I want to because of what I understand about the plot.”

Which makes this nonsense all the more non-sensical:

To which I say a hearty “Fuck you.” I’ve seen the trailer. I’ve read reviews. I’ve read discussions. All of which inform my decision about whether I think this is a movie I would like, and inform my opinion about the story the movie tells. We all hold opinions about art or cultural events we haven’t seen/read/heard/participated in.

If you’d like to dissuade me of my opinion, I’d happily like to learn more about the movie, or learn why concerns about the male gaze don’t ring true for you. But don’t pretend you are ‘more informed’ just because you saw the damned thing. You’re differently informed, which is not the same thing.

Also, I’m glad to know you haven’t met a single person who disagrees with your opinion about this movie (you must be really be talking about this movie a lot to be sure of that), but I think that says more about you and your cohort than it reflects some sort of inherent rightness of your opinion.

There are plenty of folks who are talking about this movie who do think there are issues with it (as you acknowledged), but you’d rather engage in dismissing the validity of my holding an opinion in the first place (because it is different than yours) than, I don’t know, talk about the movie. It’s an uphill battle not just to convince anyone about systemic misogyny, but to engage in the discussion in the first place.

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You have an in depth opinion on a movie you didn’t see?

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I will say these are not quite correct descriptions and I think that makes a difference in this case.

Bella is not brought back to life. She commits suicide while she is pregnant (and the reasons for that are revealed eventually). Godwin Baxter takes the brain of the unborn fetus and puts it in the adult Bella’s head (discarding the adult brain). So, Bella is a child in an adult’s body. That informs a LOT of what happens throughout the movie. Also, she jumped off a bridge and not a cliff so that description is suspect.

I do not know if that changes your perspective of what is happening but I think it matters as regards Bella’s journey and how the movie plays out.

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I bet both of them have seen it.

But you’re uninformed.

Sometimes that’s difficult when someone takes a shit in the thread.
I’ll bet, had you started a parallel thread addressing you’re issues with what you know about the movie, you wouldn’t have been pounced on and could have had a civil discussion about it.

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No. I have a strong opinion about whether I want to see the thing, based on commenters, reviewers, and public discourse.

I don’t get why this is difficult, or why this idea that “you have to see it to express a thought about it” is so pervasive.

I have a bookshelf dedicated to history and criticism of Broadway. I have not seen every show that I have read about. But I still can engage with discussion about Green Grow the Lilacs and its cultural relevancy, innovations, and how it reflected a particular era of American history. I can still lead students through that material. But maybe they shouldn’t think they are informed about any of the plays we talk about or the excerpts we watch until they see the original productions?

Is it necessary to see the play in order to have those discussions, or to form opinions about them? No. Would seeing the play add a layer of knowledge? Sure.

I saw Citizen Kane once. I don’t remember a lot. But apparently I’m more informed than someone who hasn’t seen it but has read some essays about it?

This version of “being informed” is a fallacy.

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Thanks. (and, for what it’s worth, I appreciated your response in that thread as substantive. If I didn’t feel like I was already defending my right to express my opinion I absolutely would have picked up on that discussion).

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No one is telling you that you have to see this movie. But unless you see it, you should probably express a little less confidence in your opinions.

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It is 100% fine to decide whether to see a given movie for any reason you want.

I think the issue is, in the Cafe Society thread, you gave reasons for this movie being an example of the “male gaze.” If you have not seen the movie I am not sure you can make that claim. Unless any movie made by a man with a female character simply has to include the male gaze. But, if that is the lens you see movies and other art in then there really is no discussion to be had.

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Well, at least I learned a new term today, so that’s cool.

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Yorgos Lanthimos makes movies about how the social systems that people, especially privileged people, create to support and comfort themselves turn and destroy them, often shown in a surrealistic manner. The Lobster pair-bonding and its discontents. The Killing of a Sacred Deer the suburban professional middle class (hardly virgin territory). The Favourite the aristocracy. Are you sure Poor Things was a clean break with this, and just a woman-hate fling?

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I haven’t seen Poor Things yet, but it sounds very similar thematically to a movie I saw growing up where a couple of “scientists” create a woman. She went crazy and messed up the whole house. But in the end she did help her creators figure out what they really wanted in a girl.

Does every film now need to check off a bunch of boxes to ensure it has appropriate levels of “wokeness” for all audiences? I think people can certainly discuss whether a film is actually a “discourse on feminine empowerment through sexuality” without that being the defining characteristic of whether a film is considered “good” or not. Although from the box office revenue and Rotten Tomato scores, a lot of people seemed to like Poor Things.

Besides, from Barbie to Bride of Frankenstein, I don’t think I can recall a single story where someone says “You know what I want to do? I’m going to create an average looking woman to live whatever life she wants!” Shit, even going back to Adam and Eve, the first thing God said to Eve was “keep this dork company”. And then they got mad because she went off and did her own thing!

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Yes, you are. I’m not sure why there’s even a question there.

Can you expand on that?

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Poor Things is an especially tricky film to try to evaluate from outside the cinema. There are a lot of things about it I’m not sure I understand – and I saw it.

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Bullshit. And I ask you, what about the following is “too confident”?

Is it that I should not have drawn that particular conclusion about the movie? Or is it that I should not have drawn any conclusions about the movie? At what point are what sorts of conclusions appropriate?

“I don’t think I’m going to see this because it seems like XXXXX”. That’s all I said. Should no one ever express a desire or lack of desire to see a film or explain why they feel that way?

What was I “too confident” about, and why was that worthy of being jumped on?

@Whack-a-Mole , you’re falling down the “well, are you just saying that all men can’t make movies with women?” straw man route. I didn’t say that. Just because my current understanding about the plot of this film leads me to be skeptical about its ability to portray a female protagonist and her sexuality in a way that is not a male-centered fantasy does not mean that I think every movie has that problem. It is not just that men wrote and directed it, it is that fact in combination with a plot and execution of the plot that feels like it undermines the story of an empowered woman that the author(s) seem to want to tell.

I’ve never seen Revenge of the Nerds, but guess what, I know the plot (and can maybe find a few summaries to try to ensure accuracy). And, I think it’s reasonable for me to say something like “there’s a bit in which one guy dresses up in the costume of another guy to trick a girl into having sex with him. That’s super problematic, and I don’t want to see that movie.”

Is that not an opinion I should express? Am I not informed enough about the movie to have that opinion? What if I lead with “From what I’ve read, Revenge of the Nerds has a lot of problematic elements and absolutely is a movie seen through the male gaze.”?

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I don’t know if I can expand beyond my Citizen Kane anecdote.

I have seen that movie, and here’s what I can tell you about it:
It was directed by Orson Welles.
There’s a guy, Citizen Kane, who is a wealthy business man of some sort. He dies and says “Rosebud”. People try to figure out what he meant.
The movie is notable for reasons.
It is in black and white.

… maybe an extreme example because it’s been so long since I’ve seen it and I clearly don’t remember much. But my point is that even if I had a slightly more coherent idea of what happened, just having seem the thing does not mean I am more informed about the movie than someone who has learned about it some other way. Someone who has not seen the movie but read the wiki article, or some other article, would be more informed about the movie than I am.

Experiencing something is one way of being informed about a thing. There are other ways to be informed as well. We don’t expect people to not have opinions about current events if they have not directly witnessed them.

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I’m seeing an OP calling themselves out for a threadshit when they lectured people about a movie that they hadn’t even seen, and then got grumpy when the ignorance wasn’t appreciated.

Fun self-Pitting there.

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Personally, I don’t think I can make that claim about any movie, regardless of whether or not I’ve seen it. Because I’m a male. The whole point of the concept of “male gaze” is that men take it for granted, because it’s made for us. If I want to figure out whether any movie is an example of male gaze, the way I need to do that is to ask a woman, or preferably multiple women, and I think that a man who hasn’t seen the movie but has sought out the opinions of many women who have seen the movie probably does have a better conception of how a movie rates than does a man who’s seen the movie but not sought out opinions of women.

Does such a man have a better conception of the quality of the film as a whole? Probably not. Others in the CS thread, for instance, have commented on the cinematography and visuals, and that’s something that you’ll get a much clearer understanding of by watching the film than by hearing about it. Male gaze is but one of many traits to judge a film by. But on that one specific topic of male gaze? Other way around.

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I can’t judge movies, as a woman, that say to me “this is for men, by men to be only enjoyed by men”. Not just because of sex or nudity.
(Excluding full out pornography). Men make movies. Women make movies. We as consumers want to see the beautiful movie stars. It’s a commodity that sells very well. Men and Women alike.

It seems to me there are many movies that are sexy in clever, prettily cinematic and nice to look at without being misogynistic.

I personally don’t like seeing rape or violent sexual interpretation. I don’t like seeing chainsaw murder either.

I’ve recently been introduced to many movies I prejudged as just awful and not worth my time. But I took a chance on a few and it turns out I was not nearly informed enough to judge.
And I liked some.

Sometimes you just gotta look at a thing. To make a clear judgement on it.

If it’s distasteful to you. Don’t.

(ETA…I have not seen the movie, just the trailers. This is the first discussion I’ve read about it. But I do wanna see it)

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As the OP of that thread and the one who received a mod comment as my commenting on your post was judged attacking the poster rather than the behavior (a judgement I accept and will try to learn from) let me chime in:

The intent of the thread was to have an informed discussion with others who had seen the film as the film was definitely one that left me thinking. As stated in the OP, I had questions.

The misogynistic take completely surprised me as I had not seen the movie in that way at all. I was interested in having a back and forth respectful discussion about that with those who had actually seen the film. My response to it was:

Um no.

You made a pretty hostile sarcastic comment about a work you have not seen. If what you said was just a “because it seems like …” it would have been fine. It doesn’t seem like that to many of us who actually saw it, FWIW.

Actually yes that would be perfectly fine. To state that according to sources I trust X is the case is fine.

Well if they are joining in a conversation with people who have recently seen/read/heard the original creative work source material, then yes, they should recognize that having read a review or two of it does not make them informed enough to lecture the others in the room about the source material. It makes them informed enough to ask intelligent questions about it perhaps? And reading an academic analysis of something is of some value, as long as one recognizes that one is experiencing through that person’s filter, not their own, and takes it with appropriate grains of salt when there are multiple other interpretations and takes floated as well.

I don’t want to discuss whether or not Huck Finn is a racist work or a book that was for it’s time very anti racist with someone who never read the book but feels entitled to lecture about it because they read a several paragraphs opinion piece about saying it should be banned because it uses the n-word.

Any way. Anyone who has seen the movie and wants to discuss it please join the discussion in CS! Anyone whose opinion is simply that they heard it was written and directed by men and that there was nudity and sex so it is misogynistic can please shit in a toilet instead.

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I’ll be stopping back to find out if peoples’ opinions change after seeing the film.

.

Disclosure: I could be the OP. I’ve had strong opinions about films before I see (or refuse to see) them.
I watched the trailer for Fight Club, and swore I’d never go to a movie about sweaty half-naked guys punching each other in a basement. It took one of my students shoving the VHS case in my hand as we were leaving for the holidays, and saying “This is not what you think it is.”