Here is a thing I was writing in e-mails to everybody late last week: I seriously never thought I would see a movie more offensive to all of my many delicate sensibilities than Observe & Report! But I did. I saw that movie. And then I wrote about it, for Comment is Free:
Anyone who goes to the movies looking for sexism has her work cut out for her. Most movies are directed by men. The vast majority of top studio executives are men. Male demographics are prized. And, maybe because of the above-mentioned facts about who is producing and creating movies, most movies tend to focus on male experiences and male heroes, while movies made "for women" tend to be tossed-off, patronising and terrible. It's more challenging, actually, to look for movies that aren't sexist.
Nevertheless, when every single review of a movie mentions its misogyny, I pay attention. Particularly when it comes from a screenplay written by three ladies, and when one of those very few female studio executives – Amy Pascal, of Sony Pictures Entertainment – was responsible for green-lighting it.
This was why I ended up going out to a theatre in Queens, New York, in the middle of the day, to see The Ugly Truth, the beautiful, terrible brainchild of screenwriters Nicole Eastman, Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith. Readers: If there is any experience more humiliating for a girl than uttering the phrase "One for The Ugly Truth, please," I haven't had it yet. As I took the ticket, I realised that to any outside observer, this would appear to be the absolute worst-case scenario for my life.
Oh, it is long and it is angry. Read it, please, that my suffering may not be in vain.
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