 Starring: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Ed Burns, Malin Ackerman
Director: Anne Fletcher
Year Of Release: 2008
Plot: Jane is obsessed with weddings and has been a bridesmaid 27 times. However she spends so much time helping to plan other people’s weddings that she has no time for a social life of her own, instead secretly lusting after her boss, while never letting him know how she feels. However when her sister makes a move on her boss, and a cynical journalist gets interested in her, Jane starts to learn how to loosen up. |
Are women really only interested in wedding and shoes? They don’t seem to be when I talk to them, but I’ve never been a women and have no plans to become one, so it’s impossible for me to tell whether underneath the broad interests and intelligence they seem to have, whether actually all they really care about is getting married and having some nice dresses. The reason I ask is because I’m pretty certain that if an alien civilisation decided to judge humanity on the films we produce (which I bloody well hope they’re not), while neither gender would come out anything like they are in real life, they’d probably conclude weddings and shoes are the main preoccupations for the female of the species (although occasionally they also like to be devoted wives and mothers, or personality-free accessories to a more important man).
I’m not saying this to trash 27 Dresses, because actually I quite like it. Katherine Heigl is good and sparks with James Marsden, and it’s a surprisingly entertaining movie, but it does seem to fit into a recent trend where virtually all the popular movies aimed at women are about weddings and/or fashion. Beyond 27 Dresses, in the last couple of years we’ve had Sex And The City, Mamma Mia, The Devil Wears Prada, The Proposal, Confessions Of At Shopaholic and numerous others.
To a certain extent the reason for this is because as always in Hollywood, as soon as one film on a particular subject finds success, everyone else copies it, hoping that lightning will strike twice. So you have one hit wedding movie and that breeds hundreds more, just as the success of Transformers has ensured every toy ever created now has a movie in the works.
However I can’t but wonder if there’s an odd form of sexism going on here. There definitely seems to be a regression in romantic comedies in the last few years, where they’ve gone back to presenting women as being exclusively interested in ‘girly’ things like wedding and clothes, and unable to function or lead an even vaguely happy life without a man on their arm.
However the odd thing is that most of these new breed of rom coms have been written and/or directed by women. Previously most romantic comedies were put together by men, even if they were aimed at women. That’s now changed with a new generation of female filmmakers, such as Aline McKenna Brosh (writer of 27 Dresses and The Devil Wear Prada) and Anne Fletcher (director of 27 Dresses and The Proposal), venturing forth with films aimed more exclusively at a female audience. This should be a good thing and you’d expect it to result in a broader range of movies that present genuine female voices, with female characters that are more complex and realistic, but to be honest, in a lot of these films, the women are more two-dimensional that they were in the movies written and directed by men.
So why is this? One possibility is that while for decades there’s been a fight for sexual equality and accusations that men have treated women unfairly, actually we’ve given the female of the species more credit than they’re due, and underneath the modern veneer, they don’t want to be anything more than wives and mothers, wearing fancy dresses and fuck me shoes.
And now it’s got to the point where evil men have pushed equality so far that we’re forcing women to make movies, where they’re subconsciously crying out to be taken less seriously. And the success of these films shows that millions of other women just want to be frilly little things as well, and certainly not full bodied people with broad lives and interests.
There’s also another possibility, which I can’t prove, but I suspect is what’s really going on. While there are now more female writers and directors making films about and for women, the people who actually decide which movies do and don’t get made are still largely men. The result is a rather backwards situation, where if a female-oriented movie is being put together that’s written and/or directed by a man, a studio executive is more likely to push for slightly more complex, interesting female characters, because otherwise they know that there may be a backlash about men demeaning women. However if you’ve got a female writer or director, you don’t need to worry about this, because you can always just say, ‘Well, a woman made it.’
However from many recent movies, you get the impression that female writers and directors are only interested in writing flighty films about women obsessed with weddings, men and shoes, but I’d suggest that it’s not because there aren’t any female-written scripts with more complex characters, but that Hollywood isn’t interested in making it. The result is that a slight spread of equality behind-the-camera has actually led to less equality on the screen.
This isn’t a far-fetched as you’d think, because Hollywood really is an old boy’s club. Few industries have managed to get to 2009 without far more female integration. There are still vastly more men in important positions in Hollywood than women, and although a few women have managed to make it to the top (such as Amy Pascal running Columbia), generally they’ve been kept in minor positions or haven’t even been allowed to get onto the ladder.
The result is that the only women allowed to make popular movies are those prepared to make girly films about shoes and weddings, while anyone wanting to make something more complex or different, doesn’t get their script past the endless parade of male Hollywood executives who have all the power. Consciously or subconsciously, having female writers and directors actually allows the men in charge to make movies that reflect what they really think about women and what they want, and do it with impunity, which they can’t do that as easily with male writers and directors.
The representation of women both on screen and behind-the-camera really is a problem in the film industry, and while it’s definitely good news that more female-oriented movies are being made and directed by women, the actual films themselves seem a bit of a regression. It’s two steps forward and one back, and I suspect that it’s because ultimately it’s still men who are in charge, and they’re not really that interested in equality.
TIM ISAAC
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