Please welcome our newest blogger Amanda, who will be interning at Trixie Films this summer:
A week or so ago, I saw the trailer for the new film The Ugly Truth. I was shocked, mostly because I felt like I was reading a page out of my gender and women’s studies textbook. The trailer is a perfect example of what dominant heterosexual patriarchy looks like: Young, attractive, straight, white, urban, upper middle class characters Mike and Abby act out the heteronormative script of gender roles and courtship and claiming those behaviors and values to be the ugly truth. Class, please open your textbooks…
1. Biological Determinism: Men love sex/their penises and women love being emotional/in relationships. Of course this is not true for every male and female specimen on earth. Men have emotions too and there are plenty of women who love and enjoy sex.
2. The Double Bind: Mike tells Abby she has to be the librarian and the stripper at the same time. This is referring to our culture’s double standard for women’s sexuality. If a woman is a prude or doesn’t want to have sex then she is not as attractive. However, if a woman is sexually active, she can be easily labeled as a slut or a whore and again is less attractive.
3. The Male Gaze: Mike tells Abby that “Men are very visual.” Ah yes, let me just turn to chapter 3. This statement is used to make sure that Abby constructs herself as the object of the gaze so that she may become passive desired object instead of an active desiring one.
The media makes us believe that these gendered behaviors are actually part of who we are and there’s nothing we can do to change that. In fact, we learn all this from the culture around us. This movie is doing exactly that. Even if you don’t believe it consciously, the subliminal messages fester in your subconscious and you can never really know how much you absorb as truth.
July 20, 2009
It’s Ugly, But It Certainly is NOT The Truth
3 comments:
I have some major problems with this movie. It's completely stereotypical and tells women that they have to change in order for men to like them. The poster alone is disgustingly stereotypical, saying that women overthink and love with their heads and men only think with their genitals.
I wrote more about this at my blog. Here is the link:
http://youngfeministadventures.blogspot.com/2009/07/truth-about-ugly-truth.html
Hey Laura -
"the trailer does not seem to show Heigl as being a "worthy foe" to Butler. I see her following what Butler tells her to do in order to find love. Where is she standing up to him other than saying that he's being gross and then doing what he says anyways?"
Your post is great. I think this film is going to generate a lot of conversation.
I hope it generates conversation, rather than simply supporting what people already believe. I tried to watch "He's Just Not That Into You" and was so horrified, I turned it off. I was even more horrified that intelligent movie reviewers didn't seem to register the gross gender stereotypes it portrayed. Maybe something subversive happens at the end and I missed it...
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