Which managed to win awards for best original screenplay, best actress and best supporting actress. If a viewer can’t identify with the character or get drawn into a movie about a female protagonist, I wouldn’t dismiss it as being terrible. Obviously the academy didn’t think it was terrible, it just wasn’t your kind of movie.
So in your case movies about women appeal only to women and movies about men can appeal to all audiences. Therefore you think movies about men are far more interesting than movies about women.
Woah there, buddy. I never said that and I don't appreciate you putting words in my mouth. I thought you were a sexist, but now i see your a misguided feminist. I do not appreciate the insuation that I dislike movies with female protagonists, because I didn't care for The Piano and thought it was a bad movie. I am a strong opponent of classifying any film as a "chick flick" or a "woman's picture." Many of my favorite films are told from feminine perspectives and dealing with double standards, whether they turn sexism in an inherent film movement on its head, such as "Gilda" (a movie written and produced by women that putt the film noir subgenre on its head and scared Bogart away as he saw it as a "Woman's Picture") to something like "My Fair Lady" that cleverly uses a musical that turns self-congratulatory Victorian men cliches on their head. There are many great films dealing with female protagonists whether in a "male genre" (as you apparently narrow it down to) such as "Silence of the Lambs," to films that directly tackle inequality, such as "Rachel Getting Married" (one of my favorites of 2008). But because I called The Piano bad, I'm a sexist?
On the contrary Hollywood is extremely narrow minded and discriminatory not the viewers, because most of the stories being told are about men. Therefore I think female directors have a responsibility to make good movies about women. Women deal with double standards in the motion picture industry, because it’s much harder for women to make movies that appeals to all audiences when the majority of good parts are given to men.
That doesn’t apply to men, because they dominate the industry. Men do the nominating and men give out the awards to any film they choose. They make all the rules and can change them as they please such as nominating 10 movies for best picture instead of the usual 5 this time around.
I agree that men dominate the industry and there is an unfair double standard for women auteurs. Most films focus on men from Hollywood and actresses, especially those over 40 or 50, have limited work to choose from. However, the suggestion that all women directors and artists
are morally responsible to make films only about women and their perspectives is hopelessly misguidied and simplified. Bigelow has only a responsibility to make movies that she wants to make and appeal to her artistic muses and inclinations.
You blindly write off her film, because it doesn't fit your narrow definition of a movie made by a woman. She is only allowed to be defined by her sex according to you, because she is a woman. Basically, in an attempt to create equality, you force a double standard that already exists in Hollywood. Men are allowed to make movies on anything they want (whether it is focused mostly on men or occasionally on women) and women are restricted or confined to make movies only about women. You are defining everything by gender and limiting the creative impulses or abilities of women directors in a sense of self-righteous segregation based solely on gender.
By your logic, "It's Complicated" is more legitimately a woman's film and made by a real (or at least superior) female director, because it fits the Hollywood cliché and your own. It is a movie made by a woman (Nancy Meyers) about a woman (Meryl Streep) dealing with divorce and suffering from the wife's perspective in a contrived romantic triangle and a revenge fantasy on ex-husbands. Is it a good movie? Not really. But as it deals with women's angst and stars a woman it must be a more legitimate movie than Bigelow's war film about men.
That is really sexist or naive, I hate to say.
Then her historic win becomes a lost cause and women are back at square one. She at least could’ve mentioned something about being a female filmmaker during her acceptance speech. I feel as if women will never amount to anything unless they make something for the MEN in Hollywood.
I personally think it was far classier to not talk about being a woman. If she spent her speech on preaching about sexism in Hollywood and hoping she broke a glass ceilling, she would suck the air out of the award and turn it into a political Oscar. She's a director, not an activist. She won because she was the best, or at least the Academy liked her work the best. She would have played into that icky use of "I am Woman, Here me Roar!" that played her off the stage if she turned her Oscar political. She let the work speak for itself, which progresses womens' role in Hollywood much further.
i dont mean to be rude, but that seems extremely narrow minded and discriminatory. Women shouldnt be limited to making female-centric movies in order to be recognized. If a woman makes a damned good movie, it shouldnt matter if it's male centric or female centric. If ur gonna apply this "concept" to women, then ur gonna have to do it with the men too. Men who make female-centric movies and get nominated for awards and win shouldnt count.
