This weekend, the stunning commercial triumph of “It Ends with Us,” a dark romantic drama starring Blake Lively (the only big hit this summer that isn’t an escapist fantasy), was enough to send the entire film industry into a tailspin. It should have told the industry that it needs to make different kinds of movies. these But I'm not sure that Hollywood film culture, as it stands, can absorb this lesson as long as it keeps a term like “female films” in its mind, and applies that term lazily and reflexively to a film like “We End Up.”
For a long time, the phrase “girl movies” was a throwback to the snarky feminist power play. I never liked the term, and refused to use it in my reviews. But I could see why it had become popular. “Girls” was a relic of the sexualized 1960s, and women’s use of “girls” in a modern way was like gays reclaiming “gay.” It transformed something arrogant into something liberating. The combination of “girls” and “girl movies” was an assertion of cultural identity.
It was all part of a new wave of conscious feminism that began around the time of Pretty Woman and peaked in the era of Sex and the City. A feminist film was, by definition, a romantic comedy or perhaps sometimes a non-comedic romantic comedy that drew women into it out of some kind of primal impulse. It was an update of the old studio system concept of the “woman’s picture,” and by the time the 1990s hit its peak, there were so many women’s films that the stereotype of women no longer existed. monitoring The feminist movie has become a popular icon – the now more than a little embarrassing image of a woman home alone, staring at a fun late-night movie on TV while laughing and crying into a cup of designer ice cream.
What was really happening was that women were claiming ownership of a new kind of film that was actually aimed at them. And the term “women’s film” was an assertion of that ownership. If the implication of the term was a sentimental smile at the idea that these films were often so bad, it could also be a form of authority. Women who loved “women’s film” were saying, “We have no illusions about what these films are. They’re wide-eyed romantic fairy tales, they’re fantasy, they’re cheesy. But they’re actually fantasy films.” our “Cheese.”
Many would agree that the term “female films” (reminiscent of the Nora Ephron era) is outdated. They might say in response: Let’s invent a new term! But that’s not really the point. What’s outdated isn’t the phrase. Nor is it the idea of putting these films into a category that confuses feminine consciousness with vulgarity.
No, what makes the term “female films” dangerously outdated is the very idea that these films—any films—have such a neat, specific presentation. It all started out as a marketing shorthand, but it has become a pernicious cultural lie. Let’s be clear about what that lie is.
Yes, there are films that appeal to women, men, African Americans, or whatever. But that doesn’t mean these films are in a self-sufficient demographic haven. In the 1990s, horror and action films were seen as genres aimed solely at men. Yet women were gradually turning up at these films in increasing numbers, making this mythical presentation model obsolete. (Now, horror audiences are a potent mix.)
To properly understand the female film audience, imagine for a moment that you could somehow collect a specific statistic for the female film audience. Each person individually Who among us didn’t go to see a romantic movie in the theater in the 90s and 2000s? I have no doubt that more than half of them were women. But what about the men? Were they all sitting there, dragged along by their wives, girlfriends, and lovers? Did they not enjoy the movies? Do men not like romantic comedies? Do they just sometimes not seek them out? Forgive me, but do men enjoy romantic movies? they Don't you like crying at the end too?
In many ways, we live in a progressive society, where more and more people—of every gender, sexual orientation, and race—don’t conform to stereotypes. That’s the whole point of the culture we’ve been fighting for: not to pigeonhole people. But when it comes to talking about the tastes and behaviors of moviegoers, we’re stuck, on some level, in the 1950s. And the appalling thing is that we’re using these stereotypical tropes of thinking to limit the movies that get made.
Breaking news: This is not the 1950s, or 1985 or 1995. If we look at the huge success of It Ends With Us and say, “Of course! It was based on a famous female novel. All these women were in the movie. Sometimes women can really talk at the box office!”… If we think that way, we are undermining the power of a movie like this in the marketplace. Is it a women’s movie? Or a “women’s movie?” Maybe. But it is also a human drama, pure and simple. It is the kind of mainstream, watchable movie that we should get back to. If women are pioneers in this field, that’s fine, but let’s follow their lead and stop thinking of their taste as something we should put in a box.
