Zombieland was a really fun movie. I recommend it. However, here I'm going to talk about something I didn't like.
I found the gender roles to be cringeworthy in an exemplary way; sure to offend feminists and MRAs at the same time, if they stop to give them some thought. The female characters, Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), seem only to be competent at preying on men; usually through manipulating trust or sympathy. Before the zombie apocalypse, they were professional confidence tricksters. They are just not good people. Their establishing screentime is divided between preying on men and insulting them. But the implication is that all that's fine, 'cause they are of the type that produces large instead of small gametes; and because Wichita is attractive (Little Rock is 12 and doesn't count).
And that's the whole reason the male characters, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) and Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), put up with them and rescue them. Tallahassee is sympathetic to Columbus's attraction to Wichita, which is based on her looks and her treating him like dirt. That's it, that's what women bring to the table. It's offensive to feminists (or at least me, inasmuch as I count) because the woman and girl offer little but abuse and apparently have little to offer but one of-age pussy. It's offensive to MRAs (or at least me, inasmuch as I count) because that's good enough for the men. Maybe Columbus's reaction to Wichita can be excused a bit because she's possibly the last woman on earth his age. But that goes the other way too; there's nobody but Columbus for Wichita, either. Basically she treats him with contempt while he makes himself a doormat, warms to him slightly apparently due to successful doormatism, but he really means nothing to her until he risks his life rescuing her from certain death. Seems to me that this setup is really common, at least in action movies.
It reminds me of one of the points made in The Action Movie Fairy Tale I linked before. One of his points is that a man doesn't feel that a woman's love can be real if the man hasn't accomplished astonishing action movie things. He links it to narcissism, his favorite diagnosis. I think he missed it. I think a more accurate hyperbole would be that a man doesn't feel that a woman's love can be deserved, or real, if the man hasn't risked his life rescuing the woman from certain death. That's the way we see real love happen in action movies. I mean, she is attractive with large gametes! That's all she needs to be worthy of risking his life! Not character or anything.
Only attractive women appear in this venue; unattractive women do not exist. If a man is attracted, the woman is in this mental category. No need for movie-star beauty. If a man isn't attracted to a woman, then in movie terms she isn't a woman in any real sense, she's an extra.
I actually saw the movie's "message", inasmuch as there was one, as being about four profoundly broken people banding together because they literally had no one else left.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think your point and this can be true at the same time... thinking it over I actually can't tell if the movie was being self-aware or not when it came to the character, or lack thereof, of pretty much all the living.
Could be... but still, I don't really think the movie had any conscious message at all. I think it was just an extraordinarily fun movie. I don't think the writers ever set out to say males and females suck. If they noticeably had, if those gender roles had been the message, everyone would have been outraged. People don't notice the roles because they are background assumptions, and very common ones. I don't blame the writers for not standing above the assumptions of their culture.
ReplyDeleteI am saying that they are pretty objectionable and harmful background assumptions.
Yeah, I'm not having much of a debate if the movie had a deliberate gender message or not; obviously not. But where the movie derived most of its humor was in playing with various tropes of the genre, and that part was definitely in a self-conscious way; I'm just not sure which parts were deliberate twists and subversions or not. Wichita isn't waiting to be rescued, and from her perspective quite sensibly doesn't want to leave her baby sister- and I think the fact that she wasn't old enough to qualify as more T and A was important- in the hands of two strangers, one of whom appears to be sociopathic and the other of whom definitely doesn't exert enough power to stop him. One horror movie trope, after all, is the vulnerable young women becoming prey to the crazy survivalist driven insane by the apocalypse.
ReplyDeleteI can't tell if the roles themselves were played with or not, or whether the two sets of characters were living out two different movies that happened to converge at the end.
You're absolutely right about consciously playing with the tropes. And it is nice that Wichita isn't waiting to be rescued when introduced; but that doesn't buy much because a series of her wrong or actually asinine decisions leaves her waiting to be rescued at the end.
ReplyDeleteand from her perspective quite sensibly doesn't want to leave her baby sister... in the hands of two strangers, one of whom appears to be sociopathic and the other of whom definitely doesn't exert enough power to stop him.
Fair enough. Except that all they have to do to accomplish that is not draw attention to themselves in the first place. Instead they prey on the men's sympathy; which sympathy is itself is a clue that Tallahassee isn't all that far gone. Their whole introduction depends on them starting from the assumption of sympathy, of less than complete sociopathy.
and I think the fact that she wasn't old enough to qualify as more T and A was important
I think so too. What I see is that it would have provided Tallahassee with a possible romantic interest, which would have changed the character's motivations drastically, and provided Columbus with an alternative, changing the relationship with Wichita. What else do you see?