Showing posts with label Sandra Bullock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandra Bullock. Show all posts

Monday, April 8, 2013

Heartwarming Misogyny?

Yesterday night, my wife was watching a movie called The Proposal. It is a romantic comedy with the standard formula, really. Innocuous, and, from what I can see, relatively funny. Last night I caught a scene I hadn't seen:

Sandra Bullock is in the woods; she meets Betty White (Bullock's love-interest's grandmother) who is dressed in pseudo Native American garb. White encourages Bullock to participate in a ceremonial dance and to chant. When Bullock says she doesn't know how, White encourages her to just say whatever comes to mind. Bullock goes nuts and starts doing a rap song.

I won't repeat the lyrics, because doing so would work contrary to the point I am about to make. Let it suffice to say that they were more disgusting than you could probably imagine. The question I ask myself is: Would the scene have been as funny with rap lyrics that were even remotely appropriate? I think it would have been. How is it that anyone responsible for the film decided it was a good artistic decision that cute Sandra Bullock ought to be rapping about sweaty male nether-regions (I kid you not -- and that isn't the worst of the full song, believe me) from a misogynistic lyric whose writers treat women like disposable sexual devices?

Thank goodness we have moved past
this sort of objectification. We are so much more
enlightened, now. (from Tex Avery)
Using the disgusting lyrics is just another example, to me, of adults acting like kids trying to get away with what they are able. We are becoming a society that is increasingly beginning to act as if it is made up exclusively of children -- children who don't really care much about the real kids and what they might see or hear. (But that might be another post...)