Movie Posters: Are You Ready for Death/Love/Prison?

The Throat

Ladies, if you want to marry, date, fuck, and/or kill a man, getting dangerously close to the jugular is totally the way to go. That way, you can scare him into loving/dying (it's apparently the same thing). Also, hold him down or push him against the wall; that's the best way to ensure he's freaked out enough to effectively fall into your loving and/or borderline stalker-murderous-psychotic arms.

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The Back

Awww, girls, look how quirky-cute you are, with your legs wrapped around your man (you can't get away now, boys!) or your breasts on the verge of popping out of your mini-tank slash sports bra into the face of the guy you're using as a tabletop. And these posters tell me so much about the films, too! Really:

1) your man is going to carry you away from your god-awful once man-less life
2) you're going to ride the shit out of your man while … possibly selling your body?
3) boobs

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The Rope

First of all, the women of Blind Dating clearly represent all women that a man might potentially have the pleasure of one day blind dating. There are no female stereotypes in this poster at all whatsoever. And my god isn't he so completely gorgeous and worthy of all this hot-girl worship? This poster doesn't remind me at all whatsoever of films with average-joe male leads who somehow end up in a clusterfuck of girl-stalk. That would, in fact, be a ridiculous concept in general, one that would definitely never hold up as an actual movie plot. And Four Christmases, thanks for the Christmas present illustration. I'm not quite sure which obvious rom-com bullshit I'm supposed to take from that—their relationship is a gift? they're in it together? ohmigod don't leave me?—but thanks. Seriously, thanks.

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The Gag

See what women do, boys? Emasculate. Dominate. Take away your ability to, you know, speak. And don't they look like they're having a blast doing it?

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The Tie

Pretty Woman and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past are separated by, what, twenty years? Yet it's the same. fucking. poster. Well, the newer version contains the bachelor's previous girlfriends, looking all suspicious and conniving, like women do. But both posters still give off that grab-your-man-by-the-leash vibe. He needs to be tamed. By you. Before he can settle down and give you that nuclear family and ultimate feeling of completeness that all women desire. And Jennifer Aniston, every guy's girl-next-door-girl, will totally either strangle Ben Stiller or help him loosen up and have fun! You go girl! If he needs changing and/or saving, you're certainly the woman to do it.

The Ugly Truth Roundup

Despite a "rotten" rating of 16%, The Ugly Truth raked in another $7 million at the box office this past weekend (to compare, the by-all-accounts stellar Julie & Julia brought in just over $20 million), remaining in the top 10 two weeks after its release. The real ugly truth is that this kind of tripe continues to sell.

In our last Roundup, we collected discussions of a film that was controversial due, in part, to its played-for-laughs date rape. In this one, we have a romantic comedy, sold to women and packaged as a date movie/chick-flick, that rests on the age-old premise that women love with their minds, and men love with their dicks. Oh, and that successful career women need to be taken down a notch or two--preferably by a lowest-common-denominator-type buffoon--in order to be happy.

Is this just another crappy Rom-Com? Or is it something more? What about the fact that it was written and produced by women?

Here are some things other people are saying:

• Trite and utterly predictable? Ain't that the 'Ugly Truth' by Claudia Puig in USA Today

• The fab Sady Doyle posits, simply, that "women are underrepresented in the film industry, they're under special pressure to prove that they can do well by making things that are marketable, and because misogyny is nothing if not marketable (all hail the lowest common denominator), women will make misogynist movies"

• "'The Ugly Truth' wants to have it both ways, reveling in a misogyny it claims to deplore," claims Joanne Kaufman in her brief review in The Wall Street Journal Online

• Winning the award for best-titled review, MaryAnn Johanson writes "Twenty years ago, Meg Ryan’s Sally was faking an orgasm in a restaurant as a demonstration of her own sexual power. Today, Heigl must be humiliated in a scene that’s the flip side of that classic one by having control over her own body wrested away... for her own good, you understand." in 'The Pig and The Prig.'

• Stephanie Zacherak of Salon points to, among other things, supporting female characters who "offer commentary on how sad and underappreciated their vaginas are, or clutch their own breasts and lament how long it's been since they've been touched by a man."

• Women's Glib might give Katherine Heigl a little too much credit, calling her a "part-time feminist," but they do remind us that this kind of movie ought to be seen as just as offensive to men as it is to women.

• The Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey hopes "that this unfunny comedy doesn't set both sexes back by 50 years" in her review.

And, in the What Were They Thinking? department:

In a shockingly unaware moment, Ruth McCann exemplifies what's wrong with post-feminism: "But when Mike advises Abby to be 'the saint and the sinner, the librarian and the stripper,' how can the hardened, rom-com-hating Thinking Woman not bark a gruff and hearty 'Ha!'?"

Um, really?

Leave your links & thoughts in the comments section.

Movie Posters: A Bitch Flicks Verbal Beatdown

Dear Filmmakers, Movie Promoters, Marketing Teams, Poster Designers, et al:

Recently, I spent some time gathering movie posters for several of last year's top-grossing films. I noticed that in movies with male leads, the posters usually featured them prominently, with either up-close shots of their faces (smiling in a mocking "I'm hilarious!" way, or looking pretty bad-ass, like they're about to do some shit). Or, the posters showed full-body shots of them already engaged in some kind of action.

That led me to wonder about the movie posters with female leads and whether they would contain the same elements. I did some research, looking for movie posters that featured lead actresses, and making it a point to leave out the most offensive posters (extreme close-ups of body parts, etc) of which there were many. I specifically looked for posters where the female lead took up most, if not all of it, and I tried to favor facial close-ups.

In case you weren't aware, many of the less offensive promotional movie posters featured below still led me to believe at least one of the following about the lead actress's potential role in the film:

A. she will spend most of her time in the movie trying to fuck someone

B. she will spend most of her time in the movie trying to get fucked by someone

C. she will spend most of her time in the movie trying to kill someone

D. she will spend most of her time in the movie trying to avoid getting killed



E. she will spend most of her time in the movie trying to avoid killing herself



F. she will spend most of her time in the movie being adorable



I'm curious as to whether this was intentional, or if you've internalized so much of our cultural hatred toward women that you subconsciously cast them as passive objects rather than active subjects, even in cases where the actresses play very active roles in the films. (Case in point: The Pelican Brief. In this film, Julia Roberts spends some of the time trying to avoid getting killed and the rest of the time completely blowing open a government fucking conspiracy. Yet the poster merely suggests ohmygod fear.)

I will concede that there are certainly cases where the lead actress actually plays a passive object, but for the most part, that's not the case. And for the record, using these posters to portray the leading ladies as seductresses and/or sexy yet crazed-looking potential serial killers does not constitute an active subject. Please advise.

Love,

Bitch Flicks

P.S. It's fine with us if you want to put more women of color on movie posters. But that would require giving them their own movies, wouldn't it?