**Friends **– if your friend confides in you that his girlfriend is hitting him hard enough to really hurt, the best course of action is to mock him openly.
**Maude **– you owe it to feminism to have an abortion. Whether or not you actually *want *to is irrelevant.
**Beauty and the Beast **– stay with your abuser! There’s a good man in there! Also, don’t worry if you’re an ugly guy. Beautiful women will love you for who you are. If you’re a woman, though, you’d better be hot.
**Grease **– Does the man of your dreams want you, but is ashamed to be with you? Just completely change who you are and everything will be fine.
Remember, these aren’t just the morals of one misguided character – the show or movie actually presents these ideas and stands behind them. Can you think of any more like these?
I hate to poop on one of your cherished points from the OP, but every time I hear people bring this up, I point out to them that Danny turned jock, lettered in track, and was prepared to quit being a greaser any more to be with Sandy. Feel free to harp on the “change who you are to be with the one you want to be with” theme, but please don’t make it sound like it’s a male/female thing only.
While leaving the theater, my girlfriend and I (man, that’s a loong time ago!) agreed that, all they needed to do was to have Travolta wear his letter sweater as they drove off into the sunset. Then the message would have worked.
As it was, Mad Magazine’s take on it (to get the guy you want, you have to become a slut! Isn’t that a great message for America’s youth?) is the predominating message.
Uh, no. Maude struggled mightily with the decision, and ultimately had the abortion because she wanted to. But it had nothing to do with feminism – she did it solely because of her own feelings and Walter’s.
The World According to Garp – the message of the movie was “all women were stupid or cruel bitches unless they were originally a man, or if they had their tongues cut out.” For some reason, feminists loved this message.
Went to go watch it again on Youtube - it’s been a while.
I thought Carol kinda brow-beat Maude about it. It was her stance (which the show seemed to suport) that I was talking about in the OP.
“There’s only one sensible way out of this.”
“You’re forty seven, Walter’s forty nine, this is no time to be having a baby.”
“Look, mother, you’re not going to go through with this.”
Way to be suportive of your mother’s right to chose. Actually, if my daughter was that annoying, I’d probably avoid having another one too. The episode was good, and bold for it’s time, and I didn’t think Maude made the wrong choice, but Carol was completely in the wrong.
So the world is a shitty place where ordinary people suffer and perish like roaches, and the people running things only care about their power and privilege. And you’re a violent misfit loner who would be just as happy to live as a predator/scavenger for the rest of your life. The answer is to DESTROY CIVILIZATION.
Anyone remember The Last American Virgin? The message of that seemed to be: don’t bother being a nice, caring boyfriend, because the girl will dump you to go back with the abusive asshole in the end.
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest: There is no such thing as insanity in males; every patient in this asylum is only here because the woman in his life was way too uppity.
I remember thinking that the ending made no sense when I first saw it when I was 14. Over the next few years I learned that the movie wasn’t trying to send a message. It wasn’t an after school special. It was showing what actually happens all too often. It was practically a documentary.
