Letters to the Editor
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Chick flicks = pink
This story reminds of something I saw on Sports Center last night (yes, "chicks" do watch ESPN). The University of Iowa has a pink visitors' locker room, with pink showers, pink carpets and pink urinals (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9517000/). It refers, of course, to the idea that the worst thing you could call a guy is a girl. (Left unexamined is the idea that men are so easily threatened.) Chick lit and movies are just more of the pink.
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wow. just wow.
I'm waiting for Carina Chocano's article on Broadsheet, which assumes that there's news for everyone, and news for women, which is too sappy and saccharine for men to care about.
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Come to hate "chick-flic"
When I saw Jon Stewart act like a condescending prick with Cameron Diaz and her new Chick Flic, I officially started to hate how people use the term. It has come to be very dismissive and disrespectful.
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Antonym: Guy Flick
Perhaps the boys over at the Cockpit will get all in a snit about "Guy Flicks"... that sexist derogatory term denoting action movies full of violence, sex, well... you know stuff that guys like. Both terms are vapid, sexist, and worthless in describing a film. Enh, whatever.
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Hello!!! "Broadsheet" IS "chick lit"!!
I'm delighted that it's dawned on the Broadsheet editors that it's incredibly condescending to dump everything that it deems "women's content" in a cheeky pick ghetto that falls over itself not to be taken seriously. Maybe soon the editors will re-think their definition of "women's news" as stories about boobs, birth control, and breeding? Or will take the advice of all of us who are still insulted and put off by this blog, and stop marginalizing women readers in the "chick lit" section of Salon? I certainly hope so!
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Not a part of my personal vernacular
I think I have a pretty broad appreciation of many different genres of film, so my comments may not be from the point of view of your "average guy". I can't say that I recall ever actually using the phrase "chick flick". I'm aware of the term but I've only heard it a handful of times in actual conversation. The feeling I get is it generally refers to a story where the principle characters are women who are dealing with issues more or less unique to the female gender, or relationships women have with other women rather than with men. There really ought to be a more neutral and precise word for this sort of film, which is completely different from the other genre of cinema which falls under the "chick flick" umbrella; the film equivilant to a trashy romance novel. This category of "chick flick" does involve relationships between women and men but depicts these relationships in a trite, unrealistic style which amounts to emotional pornography.
I generally do find cinema unpallatable if I can't personally relate to any of the major characters, and this is certainly something I run into with a lot of movies that would be called "chick flicks". Then again one of my favorite films is Ghost World, which has a female protagonist who I was able to relate to. Maybe Ghost World was appealing to me because it explored universal themes like alienation and friendship. Maybe modern men and women are beginning to experience life in a more analagous way rather than dividing the world into a male and a female conciousness. In the end there are great films which appeal to only women, or only men and there are great films that appeal to everyone. I guess there are always going to be men that are so macho(insecure) that they would instantly dismiss a universally appealing film such as Dangerous Liasons as a "chick flick" because it deals with the "female" themes of romance and human relationships. These days this is probably more the exception than the rule.
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re "Chick Flicks"
Oh, it is just too, too funny to see this article in Broadsheet -- you know, the column that "only legitimize[s] the already generally accepted notion that there are [articles] for everyone, and then there are [articles] for women. Like a miracle household product, it marginalizes as it defines."
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Better a chick flick ...
... than a violent dick flick or prick flick.
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So far from the truth?
I just don't think about "chick flicks" in that way. In my understanding, a chick flick is a movie that it is believed you might ONLY like if you're female. Perhaps what is needed is simply a complementary term for movies involving Adam Sandler making a fool of himself, or otherwise containing nothing but boobs, bad jokes and explosions-- a dick flick, perhaps? I know it's far from an original idea, but the genre is definitely there.
There are plenty of movies with common ground, that both men and women can enjoy together-- the vast majority, I would say. And then there are those films to which one gender or another inevitably gravitates. Acknowledging this is not a bad thing, however you rightly point out that this in no way means that a film on either end of the spectrum is necessarily "crap"....though its appeal may be incomprehensible to someone at the other end.