This weekend, my younger sister, a dame aged a mere 16 years, was visiting me in my humble abode/dorm room. It was the first time she had visited me sans the parental units and so we did what many girls my age do when it insists on raining: watched movies. This particular weekend, our film fest consisted of Twilight, 10 Things I Hate About You, Must Love Dogs, and Baby Mama. Aside from Baby Mama, which was certainly the most chortling of the four, these movies left me very frustrated.
Now, I have never read Twilight (nor do I intend to) so my judgement of this movie may be lacking. However, about halfway through the film, I kept thinking to myself "wait, did I miss something?" Bella is hopelessly in love with Edward, but I couldn't really figure out why. At the beginning of the movie, I felt like she may be a cool girl. Clearly she was the least deluded of her new found Forks friends (all of whom were irrationally friendly) and dressed much like I did in high school. She was not blond and cared for her father even though he didn't always know how to reciprocate. Then, there was some turn that I missed. Yes, Edward was devastatingly handsome, but he was also, well. weird. Also, he is a vampire. I think that this is what annoyed me most about this whole story and about these films in general. Edward's attraction to Bella had little to do with her personality, her passions, her hopes and dreams, but instead had to do with the fact that the smell of her blood made him nutso for her. In very little time, Bella became Edward's "life" mainly because he wanted to suck that very thing out of her but had learned to control himself. Of course, this baseless, unwavering attraction and care is exactly what young girls crave and desire, but I fear that films like this only hurt girls in the long run. By then end of the movie, I was annoyed with both Bella and Cedric (oops, I mean Edward) and am only going to see the second movie with the hopes that RPatz takes his shirt off at some point.
After seeing this "epic" love story play out, I began to wonder what I am supposed to do in my own life. If I am to be lucky in love, what am I to do with all the things that supposedly make me "interesting"? Is there some sort of storage locker where most girls put these things that has a reasonable monthly rate? I almost want to resign myself to figuring out what substances I can ingest that will make my blood smell good.
Now, moving on to "10 Things". This was one of my favorite, if not my favorite, movie during those tumultuous years. It was funny, irreverent, and the high schoolers looked and spoke like 25 year old coffehouse hipsters. I watched it again this weekend only to become frustrated once again. Kat, the bitchy, girl-band-listening, cheap-car-driving, Sarah Lawrence -type, was someone who I thought would have been a cool chick to hang out with. She was strong and opinionated and could do a damn good table dance while intoxicated. However, all of her judgement is thrown out the window when she meets Heath Ledger (whose name in the film I always forget...I think it's Patrick). WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN? How is it that the men in all these movies wield so much power?
It was at this point that I realized something. The men in all these movies, TV shows, and such leave girls pining. All of us want Edward Cullen, Heath Ledger, Jim form the Office, Jimmy Fallon in Fever Pitch, but I have never in my life heard a guy say "you know, I really want to find a gal that like Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You." If in fact a guy ever says this, it is garbled by the saliva that gathers in their mouths the moment Meghan Fox appears on the screen in Transformers. Sure, girls fall for the hunky types easily as well, don't get me wrong. But what is so attractive about George Clooney is not simply what he looks like, but also the fact that he is charming, funny, and seems like a gentleman.
I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of the "girl-crush." I'll leave a more in depth exploration of the girl-crush for a later post, but one thing about these movies really struck me: it is unlikely that a guy will have a real crush on someone whom most girls have a girl-crush. If this is the case, then I'd better stop making jokes and reading the news and hit the gym.
While these movies are not exactly deep explorations of the human psyche, they are what people actually watch. Maybe I'm just bitter. Maybe I'm right. Whatever the case may be, I sincerely hope that I am wrong and that there really is more to this game called love that I am missing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
re: 10 things i hate about you, about which i agree with you on most points (re: liking julia stiles' character, etc) -- i don't think kat throws all her judgment out of the window. with heath ledger, she's still skeptical, assertive, and retains all of her original interests (ref: the ending scene of the movie, in which he gets her a guitar and she threatens him with running out of band instruments to buy her as an apology).
in "giving in" to heath ledger, julia stiles doesn't compromise anything she believed previously -- she hadn't been dating boys because she "didn't want to do things just because other people did." and she doesn't end up with heath just because everyone's going to the prom and she wants to; instead, she ends up with him because he tries to see beyond the front she puts up -- if anything, he compromises his bad-boy image first, to try and get her to trust him.
I think my main issue was the fact that a girl like Kat isn't even noticed without some sort of provocation (the bet). He was artificially interested in her and even though she is skeptical at first, it is clear she is interested based on her incessant flirting with him.
Post a Comment