Hater!
Checking in with the Guardian Yoo-Kay film page this morning, I found this sub-header prominently displayed:
The message of today's horror films is still profoundly anti-feminist...
I expected the attached article to be a little meatier than it was - it's the Guardian UK, for crying out loud, but I think it's generous to call it even a bare-bones critique. But is this how the Brits see the state of the genre? Didn't that horror=anti-feminist blah blah go out with the Andrea Dworkin types and the porn crackdown of the 1980s?
I know the genre swings wildly from high point to low right now, but unless it's really informed and takes place within the context of the movie being written about, the horror=anti-woman thing seems to be a cop-out, just really lazy criticism: The Dark Knight, for example, which has been victimized by selfish goofing off all summer long - by now, it's not merely a superhero flick with a solid plot and broad appeal with a little politics thrown in, but a film about everything that's ever happened, ever - has also been accused of anti-feminism by a lefty writer here and there who points to a female character getting offed as hard evidence of the movie's militaristic, anti-woman core and agfadjh dsfdfkad flibberty gibbet....
And really - The Strangers? That's supposed to be emblematic of the entire horror genre as of 2008? Indeed, I think a case could be made that the current crop of frat/loser/geek comedies are far more anti-feminist - there, it's strictly a man's world, filled with overfed, half-educated men's obssessions, and the hotties - and to be sure, they're all hotties - are welcome to give hand-jobs or get pregnant, but that's all they'll be doing.
But take a look. What you think, Boothers?
5 comments:
God, that UK article really stinks. Sounds like something a freshman film student would write.
Is The Strangers any good?
pat says it's fascinating in its way.
i'm blinkered by the critic's reax. even from the trailers, the matrix of young newlyweds vs. faceless family seemed promising.
...but even still, there's so much going on in horror right now, and he makes this blanket assumption about the genre, based on his dislike of the movie. it's not even a full critique of the flick.
"Fascinating"? I don't remember using that word. I think I laid out my perennial backhanded compliment - "Interesting." It's a 'couldabeenacontenda' film. Interesting premise of a failed love relationship suddenly put to the test via extreme circumstances, but it doesn't build them. For a while it gets progressively creepier, but once it's gone from menacing to a siege, the film sort of plateaus and doesn't go anywhere from there. Well, nowhere you wouldn't expect it to go, anyway.
yes, interesting. exactly what i said!
;)
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