Women and the Movies

Like Ross Douthat, I was immediately suspicious of The New York Times Magazine’s cover story on Vera Farmiga and the alleged decline of the female star. The piece tries to claim that Hollywood has abandoned strong roles for women, meaning that it’s no longer possible to have a career like Meryl Streep anymore. It’s probably worth pointing out, though, that it wasn’t ever easy to have a career like Streep’s, and that, in fact, she’s the only one in the last four decades or so to do so. (Nor, for that matter was it ever easy for a man to have a career like De Niro’s—take a look at Ed Norton, who, even though his performances still get good marks, has struggled to keep up his late 90s buzz.) Of course, if you want to increase your odds of having a vaunted career as a starlet-of-depth, there are worse ways to go about it than to have The New York Times Magazine write a fawning cover story about your talent and lack of opportunity.

So I would’ve dismissed the story completely, except that I happened to catch a third-run screening of My Super Ex-Girlfriend last weekend (I’ll see pretty much anything at a theater that serves beer), and, without wanting to channel too much feminist outrage, I was sort of shocked at the degrading, stereotypical manner in which it portrayed its heroine. Neurotic, bitchy, vindictive, petulant, incompetent—the movie makes her out as the perfect shallow man’s cliché of the mid 30s urban single woman. The wimpy, feckless protagonist played by Luke Wilson, on the other hand, is lauded when he dumps Thurman for a cute, perky, much-younger blonde (Anna Farris). By the end of the film, we’re supposed to side with Wilson when he patronizingly decides to aid her arch-nemesis in robbing Thurman of her powers so that she won’t be able to continually extract psychotic lover’s revenge. It’s a men-know-best view of women as either fresh young sex toys or neurotic, unstable bitches.

And to top it off, neither Thurman nor anything in the movie was entertaining in the least. It's one of the most unfunny "comedies" I've seen in years (and the superhero stuff is utterly lame as well). It’s one thing to play to terrible stereotypes if you can wring some humor out of them; My Super Ex-Girlfriend barely elicits a few random chuckles. Why in the world would the luminous, intelligent Uma Thurman take this demeaning role? Money, maybe, though Thurman is surely not lacking in that department, or maybe there’s some truth to the Farmiga story after all.

Addendum: Like I said, I'm inclined to be dismissive of the article's premise, but the MSEG example—even if it was just one film—was so perfectly aligned with the article’s thesis that it made me step back for a moment. In the comments section, Taleena suggests Julianne Moore. Maybe, but her recent material suggests a decline: Freedomland, The Forgotten are no great shakes, and even if Trust the Man was a “good” role, it wasn't exactly high profile, which is part of the article's point. I'd be more willing to accept Cate Blanchett (totally underrated in Talented Mr. Ripley), but as the article suggests is the case with women, she seems to struggle to find real lead roles that aren't just second fiddle to the men. I think maybe the underlying truth that the article ignores is that it’s just hard to be a movie star period, regardless of acting ability or quality of roles, and even harder to sustain a career as an ultra high-end star who garners both critical praise and continued box office success over a long period of time.