Siddity In The City

Oh Blogger. And some other stuff.

Yesterday, I wrote about what was perhaps my most mortifying moment ever. Fortunately, Blogger went all wonky right after I hit "Publish" and hasn't righted itself until just now, when I am capable of thinking clearly and realizing writing about that would have been dumb. If only Blogger could make the incident disappear along with the post. Oh well. It's over now. This has been a shitty week. I'll leave it at that. Now, back to ladies in film. The other night I sat down to watch City of God and, like most everyone else who's seen it, I loved it. I loved the cast, the story, the plot, the look and feel of the film. And when it was over, I began to compare it to other films that I've loved as much. One of the films that came immediately to mind was Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. Since I'd been mulling over women and film and misogyny lately(thanks to Keidra, Shasta and Lauren), I'd also noticed the distinct absence of women in both films. In the case of Lock, Stock, a romance had been written in for the lead but was cut out in the final draft, so there were almost no women in the film (stripper, card dealer, and Gloria.) In City of God, there were few women, but all served only to advance the plot, bridges to the "important" bits of the film--one indirectly leads to Bene's death, another sets off the favela turf war, etc. Neither movie suffered for their absence. Neither lacked relationship or character development, or emotion. I tried to think of films with female leads that were about women and their relationships with each other, films similar in structure or composition to COG or LS and I just couldn't. At all. Every film either hinged upon family/lack thereof, or love/lack thereof. Even in those cases where it wasn't the central plot point, it certainly seemed to play a greater role in the film than it would had the sex of the leads been reversed. You guys came up with a few I hadn't considered--Contact, Miss Congeniality 2, Gorillas in the Mist, so thanks for that, because for a minute there, I was worried. But a lot of those others mentioned--even, perhaps especially, those that are action-based and about kick-ass characters--still have serious romance elements (either in the backstory, as in Crouching Tiger, or as a critical conflict in the vein of the woman who has to decide to either back down from her kick-ass nature for love/family [I'm thinking here of the character's boxer boyfriend/love interest in Girlfight] or trust old flames [not to break their hearts, again, and run off with treasure, as in Tomb Raider]). Do screenwriters believe people don't want to watch a film featuring women that isn't about love or family? Do people actually not want to see such films? Or are we just getting lazy films? Perhaps I need to step back from the issue and think about the other side of the coin: do we get films about men that don't feature either skirt-chasing or shooting? I dunno. I'll think more about this later.

posted by Sid @ 4/08/2005 05:12:00 PM