Resolved(?) - Chick Flicks vs. Guy Flicks

Cafe Society
21

Good topic. It immediately got me thinking about which films could fall under each category.

I think your definition of a “Guy Flick” is interesting. (Although for both definitions I would add “trying to win something or someone” because sometimes the efforts are not successful.) The following classic Guy Flicks would certainly be covered by it:

–The Great Escape: the “something” is trying to break out of a German POW camp;

–The Searchers: the “something” is trying to find Natalie Wood’s character;

–The Dirty Dozen: the “something” is trying to blow up Nazis;

–Lawrence of Arabia: a “thinking man’s Guy Flick,” the “something” is T.E. Lawrence’s attempt to enlist the support of Arab tribes to fight against the Turks;

–any Sam Peckinpah movie: always involve the winning of “something”–usually through violent means.

However, where does a movie like High Fidelity fit in? The plot centers around a record store and the main male characters concentrate on such “guy” things as the obsessive rating, organization, and constant recategorization of popular music. However, this is also movie about relationships (i.e., winning someone). Thus, it seems to be a Guy Flick/Chick Flick hybrid.

Also, Chick Flicks are more easily sub-categorized than Guy Flicks. There are mainstream Hollywood Chick Flicks like *Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood or any movie starring Julia Roberts and “independent” Chick Flicks (which, to distinguish from more male-oriented fare like Pulp Fiction, I’ll call “Boutique Films”) like The Piano or most Merchant-Ivory films. In the latter sub-category, the stories-while definitely female-oriented-are considerably more complicated and the exact “someone” that is trying to be won is obscure (or even non-existent).

This could also apply to TV shows as well. Bullwinkle would fall under the first category while Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and most Hanna-Barbara Saturday-morning fare would be in the second category.

22

Maybe we should define a separate category for movies like Tankgirl and that horrible Pamela Anderson flick(whatever it was titled)–I’m thinking “Crap” but if anyone else has any suggestions, jump in!

23

Someone said once that High Fidelity was a chick-flick for men - I can’t remember who said it, though, just something I heard on TV at one point or another. I really related to the movie, but most men I know do.

24

Barb Wire.

25

Liked your whole post, NDP - made sense. It’s funny that you should bring up High Fidelity - for some reason I had forgotten to mention Nick Hornby’s books - About a Boy certainly fits with High Fidelity. When I describe either of those books and the films, too, to people who haven’t seen/read them, I tend to call them “Chick books/films for Guys” - by that I mean, they are Chick-y in their ultimate focus on emotional fulfillment/winning someone more than something, but they are so accurately set within a Guy’s milieau (pardon my French) that even guys who don’t normally like Chick Flicks like them - “hey, that’s me up there - I am always making lists like that”, etc…

As for the Boutique Chick Flicks, I agree - Merchant/Ivory films, The Piano, etc. are far more complex than mainstream Chick Flicks, but at their heart they are about relationships, emotional fulfillment and winning someone more than something…

And lauramarlane - I hear ya about Tankgirl and Barb Wire - I’ll go one step further - where do we put that old SDMB (and personal) favorite, Buffy the Vampire Slayer - action? honor? blowing stuff up? Check. Emotional fulfillment, romance, getting relationships right? Check. I think that Buffy is as successful as it is because it can shuffle genres so successfully while still using all of the standard language and landmarks to convince us that it is a Chick Flick one episode and a Guy Flick the next…what do you think?

26

Buffy would have to be classified under mass appeal. My whole family watches it and loves it. We don’t watch much t.v., but Buffy is the show we catch on Tuesday nights. Would Smallville fit in that category, too? Even though it has a male lead, it doesn’t ignore its female characters at all–there’s a little bit of everything.

27

Titanic is a better example of a James Cameron movie that is both a chick and guy flick.

But if you really want to boost your box office take, appeal to the 10-15 set in non-controversial family films which emphasize the “guy” elements. Of the top 20 films by BO grosses ( http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/domestic.htm ), a minimum of 15 of them have appeal to those older kids. Check it out: it’s amazing. Even when looking at the adjusted grosses, the youth appeal of the big movies is amazing.

28

I would be interested in what others think, but in my book, Titantic is a 100% no-doubt Chick Flick. I could recite the reasons, but am curious - do others besides JohnT think of it as a Guy Flick? It has special effects elements and a big ship-split-in-half bit, but those are secondary dramatic effects to highten the amount of peril the doomed lovers (a phrase that defines a whole sub-category of Chick Flick) experience.

29

Yeah, but doesn’t this kind of prove my point? I have never, ever heard Thelma & Louise referred to as a “Guy Flick.” It is always referred to as a “Chick Flick” (or, more precisely, a “Man-Hating Chick Flick”).

IOW, the mere introduction of Guy Flick elements were insufficient to overcome the dominant Chick Flick label.

In fact, I can only think of one film widely considered a Guy Flick, which no one in their right mind would call a Chick Flick, which has Chick Flick elements: Aliens. There are a lot of get-in-touch-with-your-nurturing-side elements to the film, but it’s still a Guy Flick through and through.

In every other film I can think of with Guy Flick potential but Chick Flick elements, the Chick Flick elements utterly destroy any hope of the film being called a Guy Flick.

And Wordman, I agree: Titanic is a Chick Flick. It wasnt males that were going to see it eight and nine times in the theatres (at least not voluntarily, anyway).

30

Except for guys who are particularly interested in the Titanic, like me. I’ve always thought the story of the ship and its passengers gradually getting overwhelmed by the rising water–the sense of creeping dread, if you will–to be extemely compelling. I’ll watch Titanic any chance I get, as well as the older film treatments from past decades.

31

Titanic is both. The first half is a chick flick (troubled loner meets inexperienced loner and “saves her”). The second half is a guy movie (boat cracks in half and sinks, thousands die). The ending, after the return to the present, is pure chickflickery, though.

A rule of thumb: it’s a chick flick if it’s about one person dying slowly. It’s a guy movie if it’s about a lot of people dying quickly.

32

My theory about identifying Chick Flick vs. Guy Flick is very similar to yours, WordMan. I define it a little more broadly, though, based on internal goal vs. external goal.

That’s why, IMO, relationship-type movies tend to be classified as Chick Flicks, because the protagonist’s objective doesn’t have any material impact on the external world (which is where this definition intersects with yours). Whether or not two people love each other is irrelevant to the house they live in, the amount of money they make, or any other physical objective.

In a Guy Flick, by contrast, the relationships generally don’t change over the course of the movie. Person A is the Good Guy, Person B is the Bad Guy, and they go at each other over some physical objective: fancy car, spy code, ski championship, etc. That’s why there are so many 'splosions in Guy Flicks, because it’s an easy and obvious shorthand for Having An Effect On The World. It’s also why romantic relationships get short-shrifted – the Buxom Blonde isn’t really a person, she’s a goal, and the hero either nails her or he doesn’t.

Since James Cameron was mentioned above, I’ll use Terminator 2 to demonstrate how my theory works. It’s an action movie with a female hero (but not protagonist: strictly speaking, Sarah is the antagonist, but that’s a tangent for another message). She can appeal to both men and women. Why? Because her objective, to protect the life of her son, has both an external component the guys can identify with (saving the future from the rise of the robots) and an internal component the women can identify with (her success or failure at protecting her son is integral to defining her worth as a mother).

In this conception, High Fidelity is certainly a hybrid. The Cusack character, from his own point of view, has an external objective: winning back his girlfriend. But in order to achieve this, he has to make an emotional exploration and change the way he relates to the world, which is the internal objective.

Just my two pfennigs.

33

Max Torque - I love that quote about a Chick Flick = one person dying slowly, and a Guy Flick = a lot of people dying quickly. I can’t remember where I first heard that - do you know its source?

Cervaise - the externally motivated for Guy vs. internally motivated for Chick is worth exploring. And I agree with your analysis of T2 - it does seem to embody both qualities in a balanced way.

I respectfully disagree with you about High Fidelity though - it is a Chick Flick in its motivations - he wants his relationship with his girlfriend to be right and is willing to go through self-discovery to get there. The fact that his path is accurately depicted from a guy’s POV is what makes the movie acceptable and good from your “typical” guy’s perspective…

javaman - I hear you about people who dig movies because they are interested in the topic - a Titanic-aholic will the that movie regardless of its Chick-ness or Guy-ness. That doesn’t change my assertion that it is primarily a Chick-Flick, dressed up with Guy Flick special effects in the second half to keep guys engaged and to inject more drama into the Chick Flick story. But the Guy elements never rival the Chick elements for primacy, the way they do in another Cameron flick, T2, per Cervaise’s analysis.

34

In a similiar discussion a little while ago (sorry, I haven’t searched for it), I asked how Jerry Maguire fit into the Chick Flick/Guy Flick discussion.

To me it seems to be a Chick Flick even though it’s got football and all that other manly stuff going on. But it’s still primarily about the guy getting the girl or the girl getting the guy. So it fits into the Chick Flick = someone definition as given by WordMan.

Another good example might be African Queen with Humphrey Bogart. Chick Flick or Guy Flick?

35

For the same reason I never miss Desk Set, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, because the context of its story is a pre-1960 computer system installation, which fascinates me no end. But it is nonetheless a quitessential romantic comedy, and as such definitely a chick flick.

36

WordMan, it’s from The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human. The narrator, David Hyde Pierce, makes the observation.

37

This is certainly the most reasoned and thoughtful discussion of chick vs guy flicks I have ever seen. But I must take issue with the assumption that all movies are either a chick or a guy flick. I have always seen CF’s and GF’s to be (somewhat) debased subcategories of movies. Yes, there are many, many movies that are either chick flicks (Steel Magnolias) or guy flicks (Die Hard), but ALL movies do not fit into this conceptual framework. Take Casablanca, for example. Although it has elements of both, it is neither a CF nor a GF. It appeals to both, as a truly well crafted movie should.

38

I always pictured chick flicks being movies showing Reese Witherspoon tossing someone into hell while going “HAW HAW HAW!”.

39

Does she have a little mustache?

40

I think that there are an awful lot of films that get categorized as “Chick Flick” or “Guy Flick” prematurely. Some of them simply defy these categorizations.

Throwing a couples examples (of many) out there… how would you classify In the Bedroom? How about Leon (The Professional)?