xoxo
Lisa

I fall with Melissa Silverstein in that I prefer to acknowledge the BS aspects of the NYT article and then move right on to the good bits. At it’s heart (I hope) the article is about peeps forming a support posse. Which really kinda rocks, and is one of my favorite parts of being in L.A. as an aspiring director.

Would this article exist if not for Diablo, if not for their looks, if not for the spin of their gender? So what if the answer is no? That’s marketing. You take the bits that let you get the word out and you work them.

I prefer to bounce off the positive aspects of the article and see if I can widen the scope. So I “Flashed my Fempire” on my blog today, and I’m hoping that others will, too:

http://everydaygoddess.typepad.com/everyday_goddess/2009/03/flash-your-fempire.html

I bet there’s all kinds of Fempires out there, and I for one want to see them all!

The sentence in that Times piece, “Some in the room tittered — maybe even Twittered,” is so apocalyptically vomitatious that it has compelled me to take back every snotty and critical thing I have ever said about anything that has ever appeared on Spout. Go with God, all of you.

Classically put. That’s the problem with this sort of blind “girl power!” –– we’re seriously supposed to cheerlead for the broad who put “What Happens in Vegas” in the world, just because she’s a broad? Is it not a greater crime against feminism to say that female filmmakers are worthy of attention just because of their anatomy, regardless of the fact that they’re propping up business as usual in Hollywood and giving us shit films?

The problem with a quote like this (and let me pause before continuing and say that I know nothing about Ms. Schafranek, nor am I specifically signaling her out; I’m just generalizing) is that it reiterates the issues with the Apatow brand that some women have, mostly those who identify as “feminist”. There’s this idea that those movies are misogynist or sexist because they’re about stupid guys having a good time, and mature women who have no tolerance for their stupidity, as if somehow this is saying that all women want to “kill our buzz, man!”

Those movies were all about stupid fun, and dick jokes. I Love You Man is number two at the box office because people think that kind of film is funny and because all of the other movies out right now are shitty. This new millennium brand of frat boy humor connects with audiences, male or female. I have nothing against Diablo Cody and the (sigh) “Fempire”, other than the fact that none of them has ever made a good movie. But quotes like the one above imply that they should be liked just to “strike back” at the boys club. Really? That’s what we’re fighting for now? Being as famous as the dudes who smoke weed and fart on their friend’s pillow? With this kind of thinking I’m surprised there wasn’t a female Tom Green in the late nineties.

“Plays like Gehrig! Looks like Garbo! Uh-uh fellas…keep your mitts to yourselves! She’s married!”