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Jun. 25th, 2008 09:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
here_inmyheadThe Mayor of Whoville neglects his 96 beautiful unique daughters in favor of his emo kid SON who saves the world! HOW ANTI-FEMINIST.
Really, the whole article speaks for itself. I can't decide WHICH passage to quote from it.
In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.
No I won't. What's so irritating about this casual slap at daughters is the sense that the makers of the film didn't really mean it. They seemed mostly interested in riffs on pop culture and jokes about violating bodily integrity. But what writers are told, you see, in Hollywood notes meetings, is that every character has to make a journey, towards something he needs and ultimately gets, and what they decided the Mayor of Whoville needs was a better relationship with his son. Here is a father with 96 daughters — 96 amazing, beautiful, unpredictable, mysterious, distinct, glorious human beings — but gosh, what in the world is he going to care about? I know, let's give him a moody silent uninteresting offspring, but this one's got a Y chromosome... that'll be boffo box office!
~
And there's this — not only does the movie end with father and son embracing, while the 96 daughters are, I guess, playing in a well, somewhere, but the son earns his father's love by saving the world. Boys get to save the world, and girls get to stand there and say, I knew you could do it. How did they know he could do it? Maybe because they watched every other movie ever made?
We got into the car outside the cinpeplex and I was quite in lather, let me tell you. How come one of the GIRLs didn't get to save Whoville? I cried.
"Yeah!" said my daughters.
"And while we're at it, how come a girl doesn't get to blow up the Death Star! Or send ET home? Or defeat Captain Hook! Or Destroy the Ring of Power!"
"That's rotten!" cried my daughters.
"How come Trinity can't be the One who defeats the Matrix!" I yelled.
"What are you talking about?" they said.
"You'll find out later," I said. "But here's one: how come a girl doesn't get to defeat Lord Voldemort!"
"Well, wait a minute, Papa," they said. "None of us would want to mess with him."
I took their point. But I still wanted to grab that fictional, silly mayor of Whoville by his weirdly ruffled neck, and say, you see those 96 people over there? Those girls, those women, those daughters? You know what they're saying to you, every minute of every day that you waste thinking about anything else?
They are shouting at you. They are shouting:
"We are here! We are here! We are here!"
Urm. Does this guy READ Dr. Suess? Because Jojo saving the world is exactly what happened in the book! Hell, I'd argue they did more with Jojo in the movie: Book!Jojo was a faceless slacker while Movie!Jojo liked Astronomy and you know, did something. I guess the guy stuffed his ears at the part where the Mayor's telling Horton the names of his daughters (and Horton later recites them at the end of the movie).
It's not my fault the media's obsessed with whiny teenage girls over heroines. *coughSummeroftheSwanscough* That's the REAL reason why we don't get enough Dorothys and Alices. We're stuck with Bella from Twilight and all that wish-fulfillment stuff.
It's like soccer moms who completely miss the point of The Giving Tree. I love that book, goddammit.
Really, the whole article speaks for itself. I can't decide WHICH passage to quote from it.
In a new subplot added by the filmmakers, the mayor of Whoville has 96 daughters. He has one son. Guess who gets all his attention? Guess who saves the day? Go ahead, think about it, I'll wait.
No I won't. What's so irritating about this casual slap at daughters is the sense that the makers of the film didn't really mean it. They seemed mostly interested in riffs on pop culture and jokes about violating bodily integrity. But what writers are told, you see, in Hollywood notes meetings, is that every character has to make a journey, towards something he needs and ultimately gets, and what they decided the Mayor of Whoville needs was a better relationship with his son. Here is a father with 96 daughters — 96 amazing, beautiful, unpredictable, mysterious, distinct, glorious human beings — but gosh, what in the world is he going to care about? I know, let's give him a moody silent uninteresting offspring, but this one's got a Y chromosome... that'll be boffo box office!
~
And there's this — not only does the movie end with father and son embracing, while the 96 daughters are, I guess, playing in a well, somewhere, but the son earns his father's love by saving the world. Boys get to save the world, and girls get to stand there and say, I knew you could do it. How did they know he could do it? Maybe because they watched every other movie ever made?
We got into the car outside the cinpeplex and I was quite in lather, let me tell you. How come one of the GIRLs didn't get to save Whoville? I cried.
"Yeah!" said my daughters.
"And while we're at it, how come a girl doesn't get to blow up the Death Star! Or send ET home? Or defeat Captain Hook! Or Destroy the Ring of Power!"
"That's rotten!" cried my daughters.
"How come Trinity can't be the One who defeats the Matrix!" I yelled.
"What are you talking about?" they said.
"You'll find out later," I said. "But here's one: how come a girl doesn't get to defeat Lord Voldemort!"
"Well, wait a minute, Papa," they said. "None of us would want to mess with him."
I took their point. But I still wanted to grab that fictional, silly mayor of Whoville by his weirdly ruffled neck, and say, you see those 96 people over there? Those girls, those women, those daughters? You know what they're saying to you, every minute of every day that you waste thinking about anything else?
They are shouting at you. They are shouting:
"We are here! We are here! We are here!"
Urm. Does this guy READ Dr. Suess? Because Jojo saving the world is exactly what happened in the book! Hell, I'd argue they did more with Jojo in the movie: Book!Jojo was a faceless slacker while Movie!Jojo liked Astronomy and you know, did something. I guess the guy stuffed his ears at the part where the Mayor's telling Horton the names of his daughters (and Horton later recites them at the end of the movie).
It's not my fault the media's obsessed with whiny teenage girls over heroines. *coughSummeroftheSwanscough* That's the REAL reason why we don't get enough Dorothys and Alices. We're stuck with Bella from Twilight and all that wish-fulfillment stuff.
It's like soccer moms who completely miss the point of The Giving Tree. I love that book, goddammit.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 02:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 03:22 am (UTC)I always liked what that book is about. It is about a mother's love and how you do things for your child not for the thanks for recongition, but because you want to. you want to help your children. we don't do it for the thanks, but because we want to. It is taken to an extreme in the book and of course it is good manners to say thank you, but think about it, we would do most things anyway.
Also, maybe that mother should have asked her son why he liked the book so much, before just telling him "we're not reading it any more" and planting ideas in his head. Maybe he had a good reason to liking it. Better parents would have asked.
This actually hits something else I remember from High School. When one of my friends was younger, she expected her mom to do all the things she needed, and when she became a mom, she thought it would be her job to do the same.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 05:00 pm (UTC)Shh, parents are always right, don't you know? :o
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 12:11 am (UTC)>.< Oh, whoops, that's right. Parents are always right.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 09:16 pm (UTC)Next Charlotte's Web will symbolize the sacrifice of a woman for the man she loves and his thoughtless attempts at repaying her by stealing her children away for his own comfort while she dies alone. Yup.
Because all literature means something horrible and we should never read it, just in case we get ideas. THINKING IS EVIL. [/hating people]
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 01:57 am (UTC)I heard about that. I honestly laughed when people got in trouble for using that term without permisson from Dr. Seuss's widow. It's these same people who started wailing that Happy Feet was a representation about acceptance of homosexuality. It was acceptance period and integration of new ideas period.
Really, I cry for the human race when I see and read about these people. I sob my little heart out and hope their poor children find really accepting people to marry, because in-laws like that will be a real turn off to anyone that doesn't want to spend the rest of their married life hearing about how prejudged Oliver and Company is against their pet poodle.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 12:12 am (UTC)