HAHA JUST KIDDING, obviously it portrays everyone in southern America as white, backwards, conservative, and obsessed with Civil War reenactments, and aggressively puts forth the garbage essentialized notion that you are defined by where you grew up.
At least, that's what I'm getting from the trailer:
Remake time!
Southern Male Love Interest: You used to be a different person from what you are now. Would you like to ditch years of growth and self-understanding in order to revert to the un-complex childhood sweetheart that I remember you being?
Heroine: No, I'm fairly certain that I don't want to embrace a cult of youth where I never grow or change beyond the sixteen-year-old that you like to remember me as. I'm also pretty confident that the sixteen-year-old that you claim to remember was equally complex and complicated, but that you were either too self-involved to notice at the time or that you've spent the intervening years of our separation re-writing me in your head in order to idealize something that I never was, never will be, and wouldn't be happy as. Furthermore, your unwillingness to grant me the divorce that I want and using the law to force me to spend time and money to gratify your need for attention speaks to an abusive, controlling trait that doesn't mesh well with your insistence that I need to change to become the "real" me that you think you know so well. You're setting off major red flags, so here is my lawyer who will deal with you further while I extricate myself from any and all contact with you.
Northern Male Love Interest: Does this mean you'll marry me after all?
Heroine: No, I'd prefer to marry someone who can come up with a more personalized proposal than renting out Tiffany's for the night. Was that supposed to be romantic? It's like you thought the best way to win my love was to write a check. I appreciate you trying to honor my wishes for the ring of my choice, but there are ways to do that which still suggest that you know more about me as a person than just "probably likes sparkly things because women amiright". Furthermore, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, you seem to have some co-dependency issues with your mother that need working out, and coupled with that and the fact that she seems likely to be extremely hostile to me, I'd prefer to not get in the middle of that. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go speak to my Sassy Black Gay Friend and ask him to not call me a "steel magnolia" anymore because I reject the cultural need to essentialize me into a stereotypical role based on the location of my birth. Ciao!
THE END!
13 comments:
I'm tired of rom coms where what women really need to be happy is to give up their high-powered careers and live with a slacker dude. Yes, my boyfriend and I have a running joke of which one of us gets to give up our career and be the trophy, but that's a joke, not a fantasy. (Or is only a fantasy after one of us worked a 10 hour day resulting in no progress, and won't last).
That said, I'm really, really happy with the two shows I'm watching right now (catching up on Parks and Rec, and watching the internet series Lizzie Bennett Diaries) for not falling into that trap. And both of them walked up to the trap, looked at it, said "huh" and then went in a different direction.
I'm tired of rom coms where what women really need to be happy is to give up their high-powered careers and live with a slacker dude. Yes, my boyfriend and I have a running joke of which one of us gets to give up our career and be the trophy, but that's a joke, not a fantasy. (Or is only a fantasy after one of us worked a 10 hour day resulting in no progress, and won't last).
That said, I'm really, really happy with the two shows I'm watching right now (catching up on Parks and Rec, and watching the internet series Lizzie Bennett Diaries) for not falling into that trap. And both of them walked up to the trap, looked at it, said "huh" and then went in a different direction.
I think both of those ideas would make great movies, especially the first. Reverse culture shock (in my personal experience) is worse than culture shock, partly because you keep going "but this used to be what I liked/enjoyed/etc., why doesn't it work anymore/why do I not fit here anymore?" and you don't feel like you belong in either place.
I recently saw bits and pieces of the latter portions of the movie, "The Prince and Me" and (note the "bits and pieces" comment earlier) it seemed to do pretty well on a lot of the problem points in most such movies.
[Spoilers, as one might expect]
The bits and pieces did not include the beginning but did have enough for me to get that it's the story of a farm girl and a prince who meet a university when he's trying to pass as a normal person. He apparently helps her with Shakespeare, my guess would be that if I'd caught any of the beginning I would have seen her help him with everything else. (The thing about being normal is that you no longer have servants doing everything.)
Anyway, he goes out to the farm, learning happens, they make out in a library, paparazzi happens, he gets recalled to his kingdom (his father is ill, he needs to take over as king) leaving her a note with a Shakespeare quote he tutored her on, she, with the help of her friends, follows him and with the help of a crowd gets his attention, over his mother's objections he proposes to her, she learns about being princess and then queen, wins his mother over, and then leaves him before the coronation.
Because a big part of the movie, from the bits and pieces I saw, was that there's something that's right for you and it's not always going to be what others expect or demand from you. Farm girl has a moment where after talking about herself she has to hastily explain to her mother that she completely respects her mother's choices but she, not being her mother, can't live with the same choices which is why chose a different path for herself and can't bear the idea of being on her mother's path.
Her leaving the prince is shown as being very much, "Yeah, I love you, and yeah, I've learned a lot from you, and yeah, you got me out of a not emotionally healthy place that my single minded pursuit of my hopes and dreams to the exclusion of all other emotions had put me in, but they're still my hopes and dreams so I can't stay here and be queen since I have to go to medical school to become a doctor."
And then the movie ends with the prince, now king, showing up at her graduation from university to say that his marriage proposal, which is still on the table, will be waiting for her after she's become a doctor. And when she says that she doesn't know if the country in question (Denmark, if it matters) would be ready for her, the foreign doctor-queen, the prince, now king, basically responds, "So what?" with the implication being that what's right for her is more important than what is expected of her, even as queen.
On the other hand, looking it up quickly says that the movie is generally considered to have sucked and what I really took away from the fragments of the movie that I saw was that I was more interested in untold (I assume) story of the relationship between princess/queen to be from small town America and 12 year old princess from Denmark who rushed into her room in the morning and said, "Isn't it great? We're going to be sisters!" than I was in the romantic relationship at the center of the movie. And, on the note of the sisters-to-be, I'm pretty sure that if I'd seen the rest of the movie but missed that one fragment, instead of the other way around, I wouldn't even know that the two had met.
@Mariah Dennison -
Absolutely. The more familiar you are with a culture, the better you get at complexifying people and moving beyond their stereotypes. You can still notice them, but they often start being noticed as "what outsiders see the inside as" rather than as confirmations that what you've been told about the inside is (somewhat) true.
I'd like to see more movies about the struggle of coming home to a culture that you've been away from for years and realizing that it's not for you/having to make difficult decisions and adjustments to try and keep your own culture alive while stuck in someone else's for a long period of time. Too often we get the initial "I don't want to be here", but then Love Interest! and suddenly the culture you don't want to be part of is super-fantastic.
I really disliked this movie, just because the story was set up so that she was going to have to break someone's heart. I like happy endings. Rom-coms are supposed to have happy endings. She made the guy fall in love with her, to the point of proposing, and then dropped him like a rock. Argh! And I really like Reese Witherspoon, usually!
Do Legally Blonde! And Fever Pitch!
I loved this movie when I saw it, but I think that's because I have lots and lots of Southern relatives, so watching it was pure nostalgia. For so many of the characters I was like, "OMG, such-and-such relative of mine does/says stuff like that all the time!"
They didn't strike me as stereotypes, but maybe that's because I happen to know a lot of Southern people who just happen to embody some of the stereotypical elements of Southern-ness. Right down to the red pick-up truck, the hound dog, the way everyone reacts to that song, etc. To me it was like sitting in the pickin' house jamming with my cousins again.
I also happened to see it with my mother and aunt, who both grew up in Georgia, have family in Alabama, and so they recognized some of the places in the movie.
Do stereotypes become less visible when they're from a culture you're very familiar with, do you think?
I loved this movie when I saw it, but I think that's because I have lots and lots of Southern relatives, so watching it was pure nostalgia. For so many of the characters I was like, "OMG, such-and-such relative of mine does/says stuff like that all the time!"
They didn't strike me as stereotypes, but maybe that's because I happen to know a lot of Southern people who just happen to embody some of the stereotypical elements of Southern-ness. Right down to the red pick-up truck, the hound dog, the way everyone reacts to that song, etc. To me it was like sitting in the pickin' house jamming with my cousins again.
I also happened to see it with my mother and aunt, who both grew up in Georgia, have family in Alabama, and so they recognized some of the places in the movie.
Do stereotypes become less visible when they're from a culture you're very familiar with, do you think?
Ack! I didn't mean to post that first comment. It's stupidly hateful. How do I get it deleted?
Ack! I didn't mean to post that first comment. It's stupidly hateful. How do I get it deleted?
I hate everyone involved in that forever. I feel like whoever made it hates Alabama and New York and men and women and mayors and...
Your version is good.
The end of the trailer just... Culture and family are hard. Feeling at home in a place that doesn't fit with the lifestyle or job or friends that do is hard. People being pissed at you for "getting above your raising" and simultaneously jealous of the life they might have had if they had an opportunity or were willing to abandon their home and culture, too... I feel like that's what the movie should be about. Perhaps I'll choose to believe that is what it's about, and it's just marketed as having the struggle symbolized by a couple of attractive blokes?
And then the awesome happy ending will be something about her working to give opportunities in the fashion industry to bright young folks from back home, or maybe developing partnerships with local designers?
Ugh. That seems unpleasant and stereotype-y. As though people involved in making it dislike Alabama and New York and men and women and mayors and...
Your version is good.
The end of the trailer just... Culture and family are hard. Feeling at home in a place that doesn't fit with the lifestyle or job or friends that do is hard. People being pissed at you for "getting above your raising" and simultaneously jealous of the life they might have had if they had an opportunity or were willing to abandon their home and culture, too... I feel like that's what the movie should be about. Perhaps I'll choose to believe that is what it's about, and it's just marketed as having the struggle symbolized by a couple of attractive blokes?
And then the awesome happy ending will be something about her working to give opportunities in the fashion industry to bright young folks from back home, or maybe developing partnerships with local designers?
Ugh. That seems unpleasant and stereotype-y. As though people involved in making it dislike Alabama and New York and men and women and mayors and...
Your version is good.
The end of the trailer just... Culture and family are hard. Feeling at home in a place that doesn't fit with the lifestyle or job or friends that do is hard. People being pissed at you for "getting above your raising" and simultaneously jealous of the life they might have had if they had an opportunity or were willing to abandon their home and culture, too... I feel like that's what the movie should be about. Perhaps I'll choose to believe that is what it's about, and it's just marketed as having the struggle symbolized by a couple of attractive blokes?
And then the awesome happy ending will be something about her working to give opportunities in the fashion industry to bright young folks from back home, or maybe developing partnerships with local designers?
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