Cinema’s Selsun Gap

I’m talking of course about the preponderance of flakes visible in female-oriented film. Manohla Dargis bemoans accordingly. My understanding is that The Invasion “fizzled” because it was a bad remake, and The Brave One bit it because everyone that wanted to see a revenge flick that week preferred one with a grody John Goodman cameo. Sounds like a bigger insult to moviegoing males than females, I’d say.

But the main strangeness in what starts out as Dargis’ basically sensible proposition (not enough good movies with good women these days) heads into territory that seems to ensure doom. Dargis is justly prepared to preemptively “boil” a representative bit of upcoming tripe (rabbit actually) called The House Bunny, a meditation on life after Hef’s Mansion. Her idea of a step up? Not Knocked Up, or even Juno, but, uh, Baby Mama and The Devil Wears Prada.

the success of “Baby Mama” indicates — just as the summer hit “The Devil Wears Prada” suggested two years ago — that if given something decent that speaks to their lives and lets them leave the theater without feeling slimed, women will turn out. The Apatow she-male isn’t bad, but give me the real deal any day.

Agreed, but whose life does The Devil Wears Prada speak to? The typical decent American female? On what level can the grup antics of Baby Mama transcend the cultural condition of grups themselves? One could make the case that Anthony Lane, himself situated in an ineffably male perspectival milieu, couldn’t but hate on Tina Fey. But then why is he contrasting Fey with the same quintessential toughwoman Dargis finds so exemplary? Listen:

Mind you, no one could claim that “Baby Mama” is a thing of beauty. It looks cheap, shiny, and bereft of depth, and McCullers hasn’t shaken off the horrible habit, shared by most modern comedy directors, of covering up cracks and doldrums in the story by playing pop, either chirpy or teary, over a montage of uninspiring images. Yet there are gags and scraps of action that give the movie fits of buoyancy, and these tend to come not so much from the younger, eager performers as from the old hands. If you want to see scene-stealing turned into grand larceny, watch Sigourney Weaver, as the owner of the surrogacy service…

The problem isn’t bad movies for women, it’s bad movies, period. Stupid and pointless men, men that fall far short of the man standard, clutter the silver screen too. I’ve been whacking away elsewhere at cultural castration, but let’s face it: we’re spaying our leading ladies, too. There’s more than one way to the promised land, here: Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley is more admirable and powerful than Matt Damon’s. This isn’t a call to return all screen femmes to pedestals. In fact, what’s really lacking most of all are admirable, powerful, and plausible regular women at the movies. Perhaps the reason for this is that the successful life of a well-adjusted female isn’t a big stupid spectacle, and big stupid spectacles — ranging from gladiator matches to fart humor — are what make the movies go ’round. But that can’t account for what sure seems like the excess of snark and bitchy irreverence that drives some of the creative minds behind even relatively successful woman-centered films.

I think we’re in danger of changing the style but not the substance of post-feminist man mimickry. If Apatow Man is the new paragon of normalcy, when will we get Apatow Woman, the average normal girl whose life is also chock full of pedestrian delights, small-bore drama with big-bore hangups, and an unaccountably active sex life? What A.O. Scott calls “naturally sweetened raunch” is clogging the veins and pores of putatively normal-person films. It’s not the lust and physicality that nags. It’s the middlingness of it all. Maybe that’s life, but I still read this and shudder at its inherent plausibility:

the schlub-hottie pairings that have become ubiquitous on screen lately also reinforce a dreary double standard. Guys are permitted to be flabby, lazy emotional wrecks, but as long as they crack jokes, some action will come their way. Girls, ideally, should have a sense of humor — mainly so they can laugh at those jokes — but for the most part they should look good in a bikini and like sex (though not too much and not anything too weird). Maybe someday, though probably not under Mr. Apatow’s aegis, a relatively ordinary-looking woman will have a sex comedy of her own.

The answer here, and I think Scott knows this but also senses his own helplessness, is not an even more dreary single standard. The main consequence of Dargis’ legit frustration seems to be a readiness to settle for that standard — a sad echo of a bigger problem facing women (and bigger problem with them?) today.