Bringing Back the Chick Flick

I saw the Dargis piece Mr. Poulos mentioned this morning and wasn’t sure how to react. On the one hand she’s right: there aren’t too many movies out there starring women. But I don’t know what to do about it, and it’s pretty clear that the industry doesn’t either. Sometimes movie execs try to cram women into roles designed for men–in a revenge flick (The Brave One, say), or in a superhero flick (Catwoman/Elektra)–and then get confused when audiences stay home, blaming their failure on the female lead.

Then there’s the chick flick, that species of movie where people are in touch with their feelings and everyone settles in for a good cry. My colleague John Podhoretz wrote a piece on the new Helen Hunt project, Then She Found Me, which explains just why these movies flop:

It may be true that women are now better educated than men, that women in the middle and upper-middle classes may either be at parity in salary, or edging ahead. But there is one thing women cannot do, and that is to get their significant male others to attend a movie laden with emotional goo. And so it is the women who compromise, and Hollywood knows it: You can get females to go to movies men want to see, but you cannot get men to go to movies women want to see.

Thus we have a basic problem of economics: going to the movies remains, culturally speaking, a group phenomenon. Very few people go to the cineplex by themselves. They go on a date, or they go in a group. And if you can’t convince the male half of that group to go with you…well, you’re in trouble.

So I think Ms. Dargis is asking the wrong question. She shouldn’t wonder why Hollywood produces so few good roles for women; she should be asking what it will take to get men in the seats when a woman’s up on the big screen.