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now in the above clip and the your daughter is one scene you can find on youtube don t just confirm the girls outsider status but show how that music looked different if it was done by girls and how subversive it might be if they embraced a whole lot of racial and sexual epithets so what if this movie s crazy storyline leaves you scratching your head a bit who ever saw homeless girls with such enviable wardrobes with such a great furnished apartment who so easily get jobs in a topless joint yet don t have to go topless i can be snooty about such things remember my unwillingness to overlook the narrative gaps in easy a but i finished watching it and only wanted to return to certain scenes over and over and over one of the last scenes in which an army of teenage girl fans of the sleez sisters show up wearing the same black mask makeup as nicky didn t make any narrative sense but made me wish the statement would come back even thirty years after the movie s initial release one final note about that army of teenage girl fans there was a similar plot element in ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains although it was deeply troubling in that later film clearly films of this early 80s generation realized that teenage girls were looking for an outlet a leader someone to articulate their frustration was this how filmmakers addressed the question of feminism as it pertained to a young generation or was it a more ambivalent gesture in susan douglas s terms filmmakers took feminism into account for a brief moment and then ignored it i m left on the fence with only a long list of more cult films about female rockers to help me answer it rock on readers posted by didion filed in 1980s films 2010s films cult movies about female rockers easy a enlightened sexism female ambition ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains susan douglas the runaways times square women in rock tags allan moyle celluloid closet cult movies about female rockers easy a ladies and gentlemen the fabulous stains robin johnson the runaways times square trini alvarado 7 comments the brainy bunch girls edition 11 december 2010 has anyone else noticed that articles like this one in new york magazine don t get written about young female actors the brainy bunch is about five young men jesse eisenberg michael fassbender james franco joseph gordon levitt and tom hardy who according to the journalist bust a bunch of stereotypes because they play twitchy complicated and most of all brilliant characters the author marvels that these smart actors bring the raw nerve of indie sensibility to the screen moreover in so doing they are reimagining the mainstream articles like this one are inevitably about men not because actresses aren t smart but because they re not playing smart onscreen this has lathered me up into a rant because i think this is yet another example of the exceptionally disturbing moment we re living in during which women s primary value is their hotness not their smartness considering that i grew up in an age when the tomboy smartypants jodie foster was the pre teen it girl a multilingual woman who graduated magna cum laude from yale i m not prepared to let men be smart while women commit their energies to being hot yet i ve been putting some muscle into coming up with a similar list of remarkable young female actors who play smart onscreen and it s really hard not hard for older women mind you as a culture we seem perfectly willing to grant brains to women over 35 witness helen mirren holly hunter tilda swinton charlotte rampling frances mcdormand judy davis the one vivid exeption to the rule is mia wasikowska above she of that remarkable 1st season of in treatment alice in wonderland as the teenaged daughter in the kids are all right and the upcoming jane eyre other than that can you think of a single young actor who plays smart onscreen from one role to the next i can t as much as i loved the fast talking smarts of carey mulligan in an education and emma stone in easy a this year there s one thing that ruins those tales for me ultimately these smart characters are shown to be dumb when it comes to men and sex respectively get it smart girls aren t smart about everything i can think of a couple of one off performances this year jennifer lawrence in winter s bone and noomi rapace in the girl with the dragon tattoo franchise but i have yet to be convinced that these actors can translate one excellent part into the kinds of careers that new york magazine s favorite young men have achieved consider the career of harvard grad natalie portman who s now getting close to 30 and therefore into the age range wherein hollywood allows women to be brilliant has she ever played smart onscreen and don t even get me started on the fact that the last time i saw a smart young latina asian native american or black woman onscreen was shareeka epps in half nelson 2006 and where have the roles gone for epps in the meantime if any of you doubts the perversity of this trend consider one of the prevailing cultural anxieties appearing in major media of the past six months the idea that boys are falling behind girls or in hanna rosin s trademark hysterical terms the end of men at the same time that we watch smart boys and hot girls onscreen we re also supposed to feel anxious about the fact that girls do better in school and young women are going to college in vastly larger numbers than boys they make up roughly 60 of college populations this has prompted rosin and her ilk to proclaim that women are winning some kind of battle against men thus the fact that our films persist in peddling some kind of retro fantasy about boys smartness seems to reject our anxieties that girls might be pretty and smart and reassures us that smart dudes will always bag the hotties if you need an explanation for my bleak mood it s because i just finished reading gary shteyngart s incredibly disturbing dystopian novel super sad true love story in this america of the future women wear clothes made by the juicypussy brand total surrender panties which pop off at the push of a little button and have their hotness level perpetually broadcast to everyone around them via a version of a smartphone called an äpparät it s a brilliant characterization of the future i cringed and laughed at the fact that the hero s love interest eunice park majored in images and minored in assertiveness in college we all know that s where we re heading but ultimately one that reiterates that tired trope shlubby bookish imperfect aging hero falls for very beautiful very young very anti intellectual woman and wins her at least for a while you know what i love shlubby men in real life hi honey but i have grown to despise their perpetual appearance in narratives so to cleanse my palate of the oily aftertaste of super sad i ve plunged myself into muriel barbery s wonderful novel the elegance of the hedgehog which moves back and forth between the interior monologues of two brilliant women the autodidact renée who hides behind her mask as an unkempt sullen concierge in an elegant paris apartment building and paloma the precociously intelligent 12 year old who lives upstairs and despises the pretentions of her family teachers and classmates they seem to be on a path to discover one another but i m at the point in the novel when i m so enjoying just listening to them think out loud that i m not sure i care whether the narrative goes anywhere paloma has a diatribe about why grammar is about accessing the beauty of language that s so wonderful i m thinking of plagiarizing it for use in my classes here s what it would take to cultivate a generation of young actresses known for their braininess just jettison the smart vs hot binary for women onscreen already if i see glasses used as the smart signifier one more time write some stories in which young women aren t just interested in dudes all the time but have wholly stand alone loves of language art math con artistry biology music sports comic books religion killing demons other girls or food even drugs or booze for gods sake just like actual women stop resigning smart girls to the sidekick position in kids films like harry potter cloudy with a chance of meatballs and tv shows like buffy etc show that smartness isn t just a magical quality endowed by nature but is something that takes work show that smartness can pose a problem beyond scaring off potential dudes when young women face idiotic paternalistic bosses teachers too tired to teach to the top 1 of a class or families in which no one has ever gone to college let girls play brilliant anti heroes along the lines of jesse eisenberg s take on mark zuckerberg or hell just weird antisocial types like lisbeth salander let girls play funny let young female actors fail occasionally in a part the way we just keep forgiving failures by jonah hill zach galifianakis ashton kutcher even robert downey jr the list goes on without career consequences give me a central female character besides the girl with the dragon tattoo who s a computer whiz display explicitly feminist characters onscreen and have them explain their opinions maybe then we won t experience that odd whiplash of suddenly having our actresses arrive at the age of 35 and suddenly become smart does this read as unattractive and or ball busting to male viewers i wonder i for one am looking forward to my movies looking a bit more like reality posted by didion filed in 2000s films 2010s films an education carey mulligan easy a emma stone female ambition gary shteyngart gender gap girl who kicked the hornet s nest girl who played with fire girl with the dragon tattoo half nelson hanna rosin helen mirren holly hunter jennifer lawrence jesse eisenberg jodie foster mia wasikowska movies books you need to know and probably don t muriel barbery natalie portman noomi rapace shareeka epps the curious case of women in film tilda swinton why feminism matters now winter s bone tags an education carey mulligan easy a emma stone gary shteyngart girl with the dragon tattoo in treatment jennifer lawrence jodie foster mia wasikowska muriel barbery natalie portman noomi rapace shareeka epps super sad true love story the elegance of the hedgehog winter s bone 4 comments easy a 2010 and high school perversity 23 september 2010 here s what i like about this movie it s funny emma stone makes an adorable smart eminently watchable star and it sneaks in a literary tie in to hawthorne s scarlet letter what can i say i m a geek about a year from now when it appears in heavy rotation on sunday afternoon cable tv i ll watch it and laugh all over again but don t get me wrong this is not a great high school sex comedy in the vein of clueless or say anything it just doesn t quite hold together especially after about the midway point watching it made me realize two things about this genre that these films rely on perversity to explain the absurdity of high school but that viewers credulity can only be stretched so far oh it starts so well olive stone is smart overachieving and pretty but invisible in her ojai ca high school smart in a good way that is when her english class is assigned the scarlet letter she rants to us that all her peers have rented the demi moore adaptation which she explains isn t just unfaithful to the book but a bad movie especially compared with the original film a 1926 silent with lillian gish you see how much this was working for me but this isn t a geekfest it s a sex comedy she then proceeds to tell us both to her webcam and in a series of flashbacks how everything changed one day in the girls bathroom olive finds herself making up an elaborate tale about having sex with a college guy rather than admit she just didn t want to go camping with her best friend rhiannon and her nudist parents it convinces rhi but is overheard by the school s sanctimonious queen of the super christians amanda bynes and soon the word is out as the camera pans to find everyone on campus whispering and texting furiously first misstep who ever heard of a high school where no one is having sex much less in ojai ca but for the moment i suspended disbelief because this is where high school sex comedies invariably take us they explain for us the perverse and surreal internal logic of its cliques unspoken rules hopeless crushes humiliations whether it s john cusack trying to kill himself over and over in better off dead 1985 or winona ryder hooking up with a jack nicholson esque christian slater to kill their high school s douchebags in heathers 1989 these stories work because high school is so bizarre on its own it makes sense in easy a that olive not only shoulders her new reputation but uses it to poke her fellow students in the eye when her friend brandon who s tired of being harassed for being gay begs her to pretend to be his girlfriend again in ojai why not set the story in idaho if you need an anti sex homophobic locale she agrees but ratchets it up a notch they show up to a big party lock themselves in a bedroom and pretend to have the noisiest most raucous sex they can muster she s saved brandon s reputation by turning herself into a full fledged school slut so being a wry irreverent smartypants type she buys a bunch of naughty bustiers pins on a big red a and wears them to school okay so the literary tie in doesn t work because it s not possible to translate the scarlet letter into a high school sex comedy especially when our heroine hasn t had sex at all this is no clueless 1995 for which director amy heckerling translated jane austen s emma nor is it 10 things i hate about you 1999 a movie that improved on shakespeare s misogynistic taming of the shrew if you ask me but the movie goes beyond high school perversity when all manner of overweight acne scarred hopeless boys at school ask olive to work her fake slut magic on their reputations and she agrees but only if they ll give her gift cards that is in exchange for a 50 gift card from beds n things she ll say she made out with you for a 100 card for macaroni garden she ll say you had sex why gift cards because it somehow keeps it outside of the formal definition of sex work the movie doesn t know what to do with this and neither do we it s a bad weird mistake if the movie is so eager to tell us that olive is a virgin why does it turn her into a prostitute by having her demand gift cards from eager johns most of all i wished i knew more about olive s motives we re vaguely aware that she sort of likes todd penn badgley the improbably hunky guy who humiliates himself publicly and frequently as the school s woodchuck mascot despite being characterized as sort of a lovable dweeb todd shows off his ridiculously beefy torso and huge biceps way too frequently he hardly ever seems to have his shirt on to pass as a high school student i walked out of the theater spluttering that he looks like he s 32 years old but in fact the actor is not quite 24 still remember grease i...
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