A side conversation in the What Happened at the End of Rosemary’s Baby thread got me to thinking about artists in any genre who show a “fear and loathing of all women” and the first thing that popped into my head was the movie A Boy and His Dog based on a Harlan Ellison novella.
Even though I found the movie entertaining enough, I came away thinking Mr. Ellison believes women are very stupid and deceptive and the only thing they are good for is some raping. Honestly, I don’t know for sure what Harlan Ellison’s views are on women since I’ve never met the man but after watching that movie the phrase “fear and loathing of all women” must come pretty close.
Have you ever experienced a work of art that left that impression on you?
When I first saw * The Handmaids tale* I figured it had been made by someone who hated women.
Then I found out it had been a book who Margaret Atwood, who hates men and was trying to make to make the point that all men hate and are afraid of women.
Talk about a movie director missing the subtlety* of the original Author.
*It’s hard to say that word with a straight face in reference to Atwood
I’ve thought Aaron Sorkin was, at the least, a bit impatient with us women. Oh, sure, there were strong characters in *West Wing *and A Few Good Men, but both CJ and Ainsley sat in wet paint, Ainsley stumbled her way into a closet, and even Nancy, the NSA, was mistaken for a man on speakerphone. And while Jo Galloway could hold her own outside the courtroom, she bungled the case badly and made Tom Cruise get drunk.
John Irving’s The World According to Garp. I’ve never seen anything more misogynistic – women are either incredibly tight-assed (Jenny), betrayers (Garp’s wife), or self-flagellating (the Ellen James Society. The only two women shown in a good light are Roberta (who used to be a man) and Ellen James (who epitomizes “A woman should be seen and not heard”).
Really nasty piece of work – and, for some reason, feminists love it. :rolleyes:
But just calling him a misogynist is too limiting. He is such a loathsome prick making such hateful films, his hatred of the entire human race is evident. But he is effectively more misogynist than misanthrope. The evidence is plain in that his lead actresses keep refusing to work with him a secondtime - Bjork’s much-derided swan dress while singing at the Oscars was for her “swan song” to acting, the experience with von Trier being so awful.
Robert Crumb is often called a misogynist, but it’s not true. He has drawn more women in positions of power than in positions of weakness or submission. He’s often said: “I’m not a misogynist. I hate men every bit as much.”
**Biggirl **- so where do you put an action film direct like, say, Michael Bay? A director who cares about blowin’ stuff up and feeding teen-boy fantasies - so by definition women are random, two-dimensional hotties?
As a guy I don’t mind the eye candy, but I wonder if directors like that are able to look at women as anything other than a pair of boobs or something needing rescuing…
I know he doesn’t actually write the Laws & Orders, but there must be a reason that the killer is almost always a woman. If it’s not a woman, then the woman put the man up to it.
I never come away from a Bay movie thinking “Boy, he must really fear and loathe women!”. I come away thinking “Boy, he sure likes to blow things up and looking at titties!” Two distinctly different reactions.
I’d say you’re making it up out of whole cloth. Men make up a huge disproportionate number of the murderers on L&O Original Recipe, SVU and CI. There have been a number of notable female murderers, but in a franchise that has run for nearly 500 episodes, that’s to be expected.
Plus, how can a creator that hates women make them the Lt in charge on L&O, the tough as nails lead on SVU and the level-headed voice of reason on CI?
Disproportionate in regards to what? The number of men in the population? Sure. The number of murders committed by men? Absolutely not.
It is a television show and women murderers make for better television, which is undoubtedly why they do it. As no one has time to watch every episode of the L&O franchise, let alone document who the murderer was in each episode, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree about our respective impressions of the show.
I don’t think it was anything so pronounced as misogyny, but Robert Jordan sure had some weird ideas about women. Every single woman save one in The Wheel of Time series is a shrewish bitch who takes pride in deliberately confusing and pissing off men because, in their shrewy little minds, men deserve it. Why did they deserve it? I dunno, they’re men, they must have done something to deserve it. The men had personality flaws, but they at least were more diverse and seemed less like caricatures.
It could just be that Jordan simply didn’t know how to write women well, but he definitely didn’t paint them in a decent light.
Oh how could I forget John Mayer? When I first heard Daughters I thought it was a nice song about respecting women but after repeated listenings, it dawned on me that Mayer thinks women are fragile, retarded beings whose sole purpose is to make men happy as either wives or mothers.
Treat women right because one might be my girlfriend one day!
Okay, I’ll stir the pot: what about Ayn Rand, with her “Dominique Francon is a strong woman, but for Howard Roark to make her his own, he must break into her house in the middle of a storm and rape her” plot in The Fountainhead?
For the first place, all-time champion of chauvinism, the unquestionable winner is Robert Newcomb, author of The Fifth Sorceress. In his book all women enjoy torturing, raping, and murdering for no reason at all. Now you may think that it’s impossible for a woman to rape a man, but Mr. Newcomb doesn’t sweat little details like that.
For second place, Terry Goodkind. And that’s no surprise, since the first readily admits to copying off the second. I’m well aware that a lot of crap fantasy and science fiction from the 60’s and 70’s was shamelessly misogynist but these books are more recent and the authors ought to have known better.
Can’t you make the same argument in reverse? Garp cheats on Jenny, Roberta makes the deliberate choice not to be a man, and the ideal man is Garp’s father, brain-damaged and with a constant erection.