I’m always late to every fashionable bit of popular entertainment. You have to tie me up and hold me down to get me watch a Hollywood movie. This was pretty much what happened to me on the delayed flight from London that lasted 10,5 hours. I forgot to charge my Kindle, so the battery had died. As a result, I had to watch three movies in a row to make the time pass by faster.
The first movie was The Ides of March which had absolutely zero plot. It was supposed to be a political drama about presidential elections. You’ve got to try really hard to make a movie on this topic bland and boring. The makers of the movie forgot that the real presidential elections in this country are always fascinating, so you have got to make a film rendering of them at least half as entertaining.
Then, I watched Albert Nobbs. Again, there is almost no plot to speak of but Glenn Close is amazing. Which is no surprise because she is always amazing. I consider her to be the only talented actress in the US.
After that, in a complete fit of desperation, I watched The Devil Wears Prada. OK, I know but I recognized the movie from how everybody was swooning over it back at Yale when it first came out. Even the most book-hating colleagues from among my fellow grad schoolers bought the book the movie was based on. And Meryl Streep was in it. She is good.
The movie horrified me, people. I knew sexism existed but I hadn’t seen such a naked, in-your-face version of it for a very long time. The main idea of the movie is that successful, powerful, beautiful women all have miserable personal lives. And the only way to be happy in your personal life is to be a badly dressed, dowdy, whiny idiot who sacrifices her career for some useless and unattractive guy who is insanely jealous of every bit of success you might enjoy. “Let’s all drop whatever we are doing, find some sore loser, and start feeding his ego by being as unkempt and unsuccessful as he is!” the movie happily proclaims.
So my endeavor to overcome my prejudice against Hollywood movies failed in its entirety.
Clarissa's Blog 
I agree with your assessment of the first two movies. However, I think that you are allowing your feminist instincts to clowd your judgment on Prada. Prada basically shows how a powerful personality – female or male – actually dominates his/her environment. Every aspect of Streep’s performance is meticulous in this regard. dress, attitude, gesture, illingness to humilate, or praise are all aspects of such domination. The weakness of her subordinate is not a sign of antifeminism. it is a signal as how strong leaders surround themselves with weaklings, or break the independence of those who once were strong, but choose to stay.
In my opinion, Prada has nothing to do with feminism. Just with the roots of power.
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Every text allows for a multitude of readings. Yours -which is no doubt very relevant – does not preclude mine and vice versa. Streep’s character is shown as being a complete failure at her personal life. This makes no sense because women like her are always the ones who have very happy personal lives, as opposed to people like Anne Hathaways character. Door mats do not tend to find personal bliss, you know?
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I hated Prada! Not only did Meryl Streep’s character make no sense, but Hathaway made me cringe. The jealous judgmental friends and the insecure boyfriend were too much. The scene where they throw her cell phone around when her boss is calling her disgusted me. I couldn’t believe that the message was that she was in the wrong, when surrounded with a bunch of immature failures with no goals in life. Ugh.
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You and I have never discussed this movie but it seems we have the exact same vision of it. What a surprise! 🙂
I was also shocked by the cell phone scene. It’s a good thing I don’t have “friends” who’d do that to me. And we all know how I feel about men who envy the success of their female partners.
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One thing I liked about The Ides of March was that it portrayed an idealist’s loss of faith. I identified with that thread, although not as much in a political way as in a religious way. (I’ve never been much of a political idealist — more of a realist. But once upon a time, I thought Christianity was perfect. I’m an atheist now.)
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I found it kind of weird that he needed faith that the candidate didn’t have the exact same drive as he did. They were exactly the same, even slept with the same person, did the same deals for the same purpose, yet the younger guy was oh so disillusioned with the older guy? I don’t get it.
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I think he was disillusioned with political idealism, as well as the politician and himself.
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I found Ides of March disturbing. The kind of movie that leaves you upset hours after it’s over.
The movie felt real to me. The young people in movie looked so much like the poly-sci majors I knew. George Clooney reminded me of Bill Clinton, and Ryan Gosling reminded me of Newt Gingrich.
A politician who sleeps with an intern is like a professor who sleeps with their student, or a military officer who sleeps with their subordinate. It is an abuse of power, and exploitation of the person under their power. Republicans and Democrats have proved that they only care about this abuse when the other side does it. Newt Gingrich didn’t see Monica Lewinsky as a person, he saw her as a political tool. And then he ended up doing the same thing to one of his aides.
And Clinton…the Democrats have completely forgiven him. It seems like if your famous and charismatic, the world will forgive anything. Clinton gets welcomed back to the DNC, Chris Brown gets welcomed back to the Grammys, and professors who sleep with students get welcomed back to class.
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“And Clinton…the Democrats have completely forgiven him.”
– It isn’t anybody’s place to “forgive” adults for their sex lives. What’s with the sudden prudishness?
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He abused his power to extract sex from a subordinate. Just like George Clooney’s character.
I don’t care if a politician simply has an affair, like Eliot Spitzer. But if a government official has sex with someone under their authority, like an intern or a political aide, that’s an abuse of power.
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“He abused his power to extract sex from a subordinate. ”
– Extract sounds like he was pulling teeth. 🙂 Unless there is evidence that a person was threatened with being fired or anything of the kind, I’d be cautious with passing judgment. If we go back to the comparison with professors, I know people who slept with their professors in exchange for very distinctive benefits. Those people were no victims. Everybody was pretty much a jerk in that equation.
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It’s funny that there wasn’t a single comment on Glenn Close’s Albert Nobbs, which is the only half-decent movie of the bunch. Was it not promoted and people didn’t get to see it?
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I wanted to see it, but I kept missing it! Jaime and I like to promote positive portrayals of trans characters in mainstream cinema whenever possible, even when they are portrayed by cisgendered actors.
Hope it comes to Canadian Netflix soon.
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There was another actress who also played a character living as a man. I’d never seen her before but she is very very talented. What I found problematic was the insistence that these characters were forced either by a horrible tragedy or penury to become trans. And that wasn’t even really convincing in terms of the plot. It’s like in novels written before the 1980s, gay characters needed to have a story explaining why they “got that way.” And this is still happening whenever trans characters appear. It’s like the audience can’t do without “an explanation.” That was something that disturbed me.
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That’s disappointing to hear. 😦 Trans men are even rarer than trans women on the screen, and it seems like half of the depictions of them get turned into a version of “Sweet Polly Oliver” (just a woman dressing as a man to go on adventure/avoid discrimination, so that the film can dodge challenging the idea of gender identity not being tied to your physical sex. I was hoping this one would be different.
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