Thursday, June 21, 2007
 
A Clarification and Defense of Masculinity
When my wife came home from a recent evening event, she saw that I was watching Alex & Emma on DVD. "You're watching a chick flick!" she said.

"I am not," I defended, "It's an author flick."

Allow me to justify my behavior.

Although I concede that it has all the earmarks of chick flick feminine wish fulfillment:
  • No-nonsense working woman

  • With a lot of opinions, with which she is forcefully forthcoming

  • And "quirks" identify her as high-maintenance and probably controlling when they exist in a woman in real life

  • Meets a flawed but cute man

  • Whose initial impression and silly bachelor ways she overlooks

  • And they fall in love.
Friends, I agree, those are the earmarks of a chick flick. However, this particular movie plays upon those conventions and, although they sucker women into thinking the movie is directed at them, it's not. It's every author's fantasy fulfilled:
  • An author living in a comfortable loft downtown (Boston, not St. Louis)

  • Tricks an innocent stenographer to his lair

  • Where he dictates a potboiler novel,

  • A follow-up to a wildly successful debut novel,

  • Pausing only to nail a woman who looks like Kate Hudson

  • And when he completes the draft in 30 days

  • The publisher loves it without a single jot of revision required

  • And immediately pays the author a six-figure advance.

  • Meanwhile, the author tells the stenographer he "loves" her

  • And she buys it

  • So he will get to nail her again.
You tell me who gets gratified more from this movie.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:09 PM
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