In the Atonement comments, Trooper got me thinking about chick flicks.
I formulated my personal definition of "chick flick" in 1999, during a viewing of Hilary and Jackie. It was after the Academy Awards showed a clip of Emily Watson where she's in Russia, making funny quips to people who can't understand it. It looked like a light-hearted romp.
About a third of the way through the movie I realized I had been duped. That scene, taken in context, was desperate and sad. And worse, this was a chick flick.
I believe that good movies are good movies. There are niche movies, sure, that not everyone can appreciate. (Like, I dunno, maybe Tron is too techie or was at the time. Or The Passion of the Christ was too Jesus-y to capture the atheist audience.) But I sort of resist the notion that a good movie geared to one sex isn't going to resonate with the other. I mean, after all, you either are a chick, or you're dealing with them all the time, right?
Romantic comedies, for example, aren't (or shouldn't be) chick flicks. Howard Hawks couldn't have made a chick flick if he'd wanted to, but he could direct Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday. Same for Michael Curtiz (Casablanca and Elizabeth and Essex).
And since I know plenty of chicks who hate so-called chick flicks, I'm going to stick with the idea that chick flicks target a particular type of chick.
So, for me, a "chick flick" is one about woman making each other miserable. Then, one of them contracts a terrible disease, and the other(s) all rally around supportively, sometime prolonging the misery to the actual death scene. If men are involved, it's usually as comic, loutish and/or completely clueless characters.
That's Hilary and Jackie. Jackie is a jerk. This is apparently due to her multiple sclerosis. Hilary coerces her husband into having sex with her, and then gets pissed when he does.
Beaches. Bette Middler and Barbara Hershey treat each other like crap and then one gets cancer.
The message seems to be "Life is miserable. Men are useless. Women are catty, but they'll be there for you when you die."
So, by my definition, Atonement doesn't really qualify as a chick flick. (But you know, it probably does qualify as another kind of pic, which I'll comment on shortly.)
However, La Vie En Rose (the biopic about Edith Piaf) has a very similar message, without the positive part about women. It might be a new subsection of "chick flick" with the added message of "Women are catty, and you'll die alone."
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Chick Flicks: no bombs, no guns,no slutty chicks in tight clothes that they have to take off at the first chance they get. No monsters, ghouls,zombies,elves, orcs,space ships,chicks in catsuits, cool guns or laser swords or anything fun. Chick Flicks: emotions, talking it out, stupid men, long suffering woman, Meryl Streep or Olympia Du-ca-ca.
ReplyDeleteAlso any film with English guys is a chick flick. Except for that Titus Pullo guy from Rome. He is pretty cool.
ReplyDeleteHa! You're describing what a friend of mine would have called "a dick flick". If there are chick flicks there must, therefore, be dick flicks. (Bombs, guns, slutty naked chicks, monsters, etc.)
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll give you this: The chick flick seems to be allergic to anything fun. That goes in with the whole "life is miserable" idea.
But the vast swath of movies--and especially great movies--are universal.
Die Hard--guns, bombs, a little light in the chick department, lots of fun--also emotions, talking it out, stupid men, long suffering women (Bonnie Bedelia).
Aliens--guns, bombs, Sigourney Weaver in her underwear, monsters, spaceships--also emotions (Ripley and Newt, Vazquez and Gorman--c'mon, the sexual tension was thick enough to cut with a knife!) and stupid men (Paul Reiser as Burke, building the template he'd use for "Mad About You"), as well as long-suffering women (the alien queen had it hard!).
But it is far easier to make a dick flick deep, than it is to make a chick flick fun, no doubt.