Monday, November 23, 2009

How quickly they forget

Just now on the Bonnie Hunt show, she was talking about how in the new Twilight movie, the only way the teen heroine can get the attention of the vamp she loves is by hurting herself. Bonnie was metaphorically clucking her tongue about this, for understandable reasons.

But then she further went on to compare this with her experience of the movie Grease when she was a teenager, how she and her friends just went home singing all the songs and so on, and what a shame it was that Twilight couldn’t have had a more...smiley, I guess, message.

Now, I hold no brief for the Twilight movies or books one way or the other. I know many people enjoy 'em, and god bless them. As a lover of most things Saw, who am I to tell other people what they can or cannot appreciate?

But the central message of Grease is, as the wonderful Mad Magazine satire at the time pointed out: In order to get the boy you want...you have to be a slut!

Then again, I know a lot of women thought of Pretty Woman as a fairy-tale romantic comedy, and the message of that film is clearly: A woman is a whore, until a rich man validates her...

2 comments:

Corey K. said...

As a child, what I took away from "Grease" - and it irritated me even then - was that you had to abandon your individuality, conform and run with the crowd if you want to have friends.

Ben Varkentine said...

You've always been a deep thinker.