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Culture War Artifact Analysis: Holiday Edition - The Family Stone
There is very little to discuss about this extremely boring movie. Diane Keaton simply Diane Keatons for a long time.
It is primarily a fable about the importance of hospitality. A pack of mannerless hicks torments their guest during an important religious holiday. They make her feel like an imposition, they treat her property disrespectfully, her partner refuses to engage in the most basic of social assistance. In retribution, the gods strike down Diane Keaton.
Blue Tribe America, especially in their youth, identify with the family. This is why their revolutions will always fail. SJP, for all her faults, is clearly portrayed as absolutely innocent. Anyone who watches this movie and feels anything but satisfaction when those jackals cry is your enemy.
Happy Holidays!
Same. I started off trying to dislike SJP, because horseface and annoying, but the relentless cruelty of the family towards her got to me, and in the end I wished Claire Danes would die of cancer too.
"because horseface and annoying"
Even I, a 40 year old divorced man who sincerely misses in-office work because I did have age gap inappropriate sexual relationships with interns and that's harder to do now, thought the movie was too obvious in its direct contrasts of the sisters. Until SJP switches to clothes the family approves of at the end, we see her in less and less flattering light and makeup as the film progresses. She is made visibly uglier right around the time 2005 Claire Danes shows up. Watch how those two are visually depicted and you'll start to see that radical feminists were not making everything up.
Claire Danes is the fantasy character of the creative class men who finance and create films. Young, eye meltingly hot, and her brain can instantly be turned off by uttering a few words about deep artistic yearning. She will stand in the dark with you and describe her satisfaction seeing a totem pole erected, filling a hole in the soul of the man who thrust it into the air, penetrating the heavens. A massive, solid, powerful totemic symbol of...something. A mystery for the ages.
The SJP character makes no sense but the actual version of that woman would not be so stupid to not realize that men who talk like Dylan McDermott in that scene are indeed possessed with an overwhelming need to fill a hole but it ain't the one he's talking about.
(It's her mouth and/or genitals. In case it wasn't plain. He wants to fuck her.)
What a wild thing to just drop. Were they at least hot interns?
I didn't mention it for prurient interest. It seemed like a relevant personal detail to substantiate my argument.
But are you asking if I slept with people I didn't think were attractive? Fair if so - who hasn't? - but this was not one of those times, no.
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I’m not watching that again (if I’m rewatching any family christmas movies where the matriarch has cancer this year, it’s going to be A Christmas Tale (2008)), but what’s the radfem angle? That men prefer pretty women? That they want to fuck them? If the two sisters were equally plain or equally lighted, would the cause of feminism have been advanced?
From the synopsis of the movie, I would hate it whether the main family is left- or right-coded. I don't like romcoms, and I don't like ones where the women have to be shoved into the appropriate box of the appropriate relationship (the ending is all that everyone is neatly partnered up with the 'right' partners now).
The family does sound very unpleasant, and I think the best ending would have been that SJP's character dumps her spineless fiancée, has nothing to do with his creepy brother, and finds someone compatible with her in New York. Let her brainless sister stay behind to be passed around like a token between the Stone brothers (and hey, Dad's a widower now, maybe he'd like a hot young live-in lover!)
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The radfem angle is the generalized radical feminist / woke / po-mo / identitarian media criticism.
Visual language in a film is not accidental. These are professional story tellers using specific techniques to evoke specific feelings and thoughts in the viewer. Even if you want to argue that the choices are subconscious all you're saying is that the visual language is a tangible representation of ingrained misogyny. A patriarchal society will, whether it wants to or not, represent its values in its cultural works.
What does the visual language in The Family Stone convey? SJP's character is shown as bony, angular. The lighting gets harsher and the makeup more naturalistic throughout the film. The film is telling you that this woman is unlikeable. You are supposed to viscerally hate her. To do this she is depicted as old.
Claire Danes gets nicer light. More loving shots. She's warm and inviting. SJP is a hag that insists on accommodations for her needs. Claire Danes intuitively wants the same thing as the Man. She is obviously and unmistakably younger and more beautiful visually.
Combine this with the narrative itself. We do get some nicer shots of SJP at the end: when she's wearing the clothes of and is enmeshed with the family. She obviously can't get the Man - she will need to make do with the stoner, rapist brother - but she at least gets some visual dignity. Provided she strips away everything that made her who she was and adopt the visual signifiers and behaviors of the family.
The message that these professional artists wanted to transmit to the future? Old women are irritating and lose their value as they age. You are right to dislike them.
Ok, that’s pretty much what I suggested. I don’t think there’s value in that. Older women are just less attractive. It may be sad, but there’s nothing to be done. It is a peculiarly sad feeling when you see a woman who used to be hot and capable of inspiring great passion in most men, instant fantasies of love even, relegated to invisibility. Somehow, I feel less for the originally plain, even though they probably have it much worse. There’s nothing to be done for them, either.
I don’t consider that misogyny, or some preference implanted into us by films like this one. They tried these last years to make fat, old, and ugly, the new beautiful. I don’t think that campaign has been a rousing success. It was a futile battle against reality.
Value in what sense? Calling attention to the fact? I agree with you - and though I am not a radical feminist I will presume to mansplain on their behalf - and the radfems agree with you too that it is a fact. Their core point isn't that the film is implanting the misogyny. Sure, it does reify it. Cultural artifacts are meant to be transmitted outward and downward. Their point is that you are right: these things are inherent facts about the world and men's sexuality. The filmmakers used those cues because they work and they work because that actually is how men feel and you agree with that because that actually is how you feel and I agree too because that actually is how I feel. I do dislike SJP because of her horseface in that movie. I'm just so offended by the family's dickishness and familiar enough with scene composition to still see what's going on.
Radfems are saying "uh oh" when you say "oh well". That's an understandable reaction when you actually are the prey.
Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005)
This is pushing it to the extreme. But - as an average man I agree that there is an element of what they're describing inherent to male sexuality which is present in varying degrees in individuals. When you look at the world as it exists through this lens, you tend to find evidence that the distribution is not skewed towards the lower end. Yes yes; keys and street lamps, if ye look ye shall find. The fact that you agree with them on the underlying facts and there is such abundant evidence, however, is strong Bayesian evidence that you should update towards their positions. That doesn't mean you have to accept their conclusions or framing. But they do seem to have a point at a factual level.
lol I don't understand what you're talking about - or why (you're a man who fucks interns ffs - this is a jews for hitler situation. Do you realize these broads want you castrated? Don't sleep in.).
I should give radfems credit for recognizing something obvious? That the common man, along with most of the right, discusses openly?
So you think radfems are educating women about the biological preferences of men? Because presumably women know life only from romance novels about princesses and horses. Maybe that's how a radfem is born: she steps out of rainbowland for the first time.
I don't think desire is sex is rape. Like at all. Radfems sound like crazy people to me.
A man who fucks, wants to fuck, or would fuck interns under a pretty broad range of circumstances can be shortened to "man". Are you a man? If so, do you seriously deny the impulse?
I'm sure plenty of broads want me castrated. Plenty of [redacted] would be thrilled to [redacted]. I live in a diverse city. Yes, the tacos are good but the real benefit is knowing for sure that I'm never far from people who would, if they but knew me and could get away with it, kill me. 1 dedicated weirdo has a 99%+ chance of taking me out. 2+ and we're at quantum fluctuation levels of likelihood that I'll be able to stop them. It bothers me not at all to know that admitting to - horror of horrors - being by default attracted to a 23 year old over a 45 year old. Doesn't say anything about any given 23/45 pair and it doesn't mean I can't find a lot to appreciate about older women. But not by pretending that reality isn't what it is.
Anyway, I know what I did and what I didn't do. My entire department was also broad strokes aware as was HR - as they worked in it, I was not able to keep anything from them even if I'd wanted. Nobody's decision making skills are 100% when drinking their way through a prolonged divorce and I can defend everything without endorsing or being proud of it. It sure as shit wasn't seemly, no. That was the point. It was an inappropriate but nowhere near illegal age gap. Sometimes people want inappropriate things. God himself can cast me in a lake of fire if he really wants and I'll go pissing and screaming - but I can't say I'll agree with his decision.
(Edit: this background awareness of the violent possibilities of your neighbors / community must be how Jewish people feel. Their hypersensitivity is an obvious trauma reaction and isn't something that could be stopped if they wanted to - and I'm not sure why they should want to, all things considered.)
Yes. They are acknowledging that there are deep, unbridgeable divides between the sexes. That men and women are fundamentally not the same. This is not a convenient fact and not everyone is willing to come out and say it. See: "sports, trans".
I think lots of things have been done that can be described as broadly radfem and some of them include educating other women about men, yes. We are not born with an innate understanding of every fact in this world. The opposite. There are many, many facts that people would do well to internalize before experience forces the issue. Regrettably, the more important lessons are often the ones most difficult to act on. You should eat better and exercise more. Me too.
By default, women are not going to understand men's sexuality. Men and women are different, remember? Because they are, by default, also attracted to men they will find it very difficult to internalize some of these facts. The dissonance causes some women to go all the way to the extreme: think of your stereotypical literal man castrating radical feminist. They're all the way at 100. I'm not saying or implying that their maximal claims are true. I'm saying that you don't need to start sanding away the extremes until you come to simple, true facts.
Take your example: "desire is sex is rape". I'm sure there are some people who would accurately be described as radical feminists who do or at some point have believed the most extreme version of this statement. There are quotes. They've said it, I take them at their word. And that's much too far. You're correct that it's plainly false.
But I know the statistics that go around These Spaces. Men are more violent. Period. We can debate the causes all we want but this is a fact. For whatever reason, men on average are significantly more violent than women. If you don't believe statistics, trust the human body. Look at its structure. Squeeze the glands. Would you say that the male of that species is more predisposed to violence?
I would. I don't understand how it could be otherwise considering our evolutionary history. But if you need personal testimony - behold, I am an average man, and there are dozens of nights I can remember where a little extra alcohol at the wrong time or one too many bad memories in sequence and I might have expressed myself through violence. That doesn't count the nights I don't remember.
(I don't feel bad about this - my tone should not be read as confessional. I'm the fleshy appendage at the end of a very long line of decisions I did not make. I had zero input into most of the most significant decisions that shaped the broad contours of my likely development. Not all of them turned out great - it never does. Too bad, so sad.)
The question at the core of "desire is sex is rape" is: do you really think that deeper than bone deep difference in violent tendencies stops at the dick? It does not. Men's sexuality, like women's sexuality, entails danger. From men that danger often manifests as violence and it is inextricably bound through human biology / psychology to the reproduction process. How could it be otherwise? You don't need to agree with everything they're saying to agree with the bits that are, in fact, true.
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A radfem is simply a woman about whom traditionalist thought is right: being objectively inferior, and sex (and other related physical attributes) being the literal only thing of value they possess.
Everything they do is a reaction to this (and yes, the non-TE RFs are betraying the revolution, but note that what they do is primarily designed to attack and marginalize
the manlier womenthe women about whom traditionalism happens to be wrong).This is why seduction has to be rape- because for them, while they aren't smart enough to prevent being snookered out of the literal only valuable thing about them, they are at least smart enough to know that.
This is why they're obsessed with one thing, and one thing only: exerting as much control over how their only source of worth can be accessed and used. It's literally all they have, and everything they say and do is downstream of this- if they can get themselves embedded in the State's welfare system, then they're going to do that; if they can declare all sex rape by default, they're going to do that; if they can make themselves powerful enough that they'll never be forced to perform a biological function to get a meal, they're going to do that; if they can get away with making this observation unsayable, they'll do that.
I'm not willing to engage in the pretense they don't know what they're doing any more than I am in the pretense that a man might not know he shouldn't beat his wife. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that Haidt's Six Foundation people only have the morals they do partially because it allows them to still see themselves as moral while rent-seeking like this (you should value me more because purity/authority/your ingroup).
This operation of exerting control is also done by men when "ability to labor" is the only value they possess; that's why if you replace "workers" in union/socialist rhetoric with "women", you get radfem rhetoric.
Every wo/man simply acts in their own best interest. I'm not interested in blaming them for that (which is in traditionalist interests to do- it makes women easier to control if they can be convinced to wholly deny their interests); but those interests better be paying rent to be acceptable (which is in feminist interests to not do- it makes men easier to control if they can be convinced to wholly deny their interests).
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Your post is clever, how you reframe the film, but without actually making it an "effort post," I think it's lacking, clarity and not overly helpful if one hasn't seen the film. The film is a Culture War Artifact or time capsule worthy of discussion. It demonstrates both how long "woke" narratives have been pushed (much longer than this) and how tropes have changed.
Spoiler: The family is actually the most gentry of gentry living in a huge house in New England with a progressive bohemian aesthetic. They are ever so willing to signal their tolerance and encouragement of their young daughter's fornicating and their gay, interracial, deaf son's desire to adopt a child, yet they are cruel to Sarah Jessica Parker's character for the slightest of faux pas... or is it a slight faux pas and not a full on cancellable offense?
A film that I just watched that is quite the Culture War time capsule is the very good 1960 classic The Apartment.
An interesting point is that the synopsis hints the family are not the tolerant, accepting liberals they pretend to be:
Patrick is the black boyfriend of the deaf gay son. So the wonderful, bohemian, free-spirited Stones were a teensy bit racist when their son showed up with a black man? He had to prove he could fit in before they'd accept him?
As you say, the Stones are the most gentry of gentry: father is an academic, mother is the iron fist in the velvet glove, and when a guest who is trying to fit in with them but is clumsy and ignorant of the right way to signal the right attributes turns up, they are cruel to her. She's not even an antagonist, because she wants to be part of the family, she just doesn't know all the right shibboleths (and gosh that does sound right in Culture War terms). Her offence is not being malleable enough, unlike her sister who is already cast in the mould of upper middle-class artistic liberal, until at the end she permits herself to be melted down and re-cast (wear the clothes of the family, take up as the responsible partner who will be mother as much as girlfriend to the skeevy brother) as they want her to be (particularly Mom, who probably is the one not at all happy that outsiders are taking away her darling sons and replacing her as the most important figure in their lives, see black boyfriend and SJP's character).
That's the rad-fem angle there: a woman must be malleable, must fit herself to the expectations of others, must be at the service of men/institutions of society as they wish her to be, must lose her own character, wishes, and wants to become the acceptable object.
This movie vaguely traumatized me as a 15-year-old girl who saw it in theatre (with my much-cooler sister, even!). You have articulated why better than I was ever able to myself. Well, the feminist aspect at least. There's also some degree of a message of "no one will ever like you if you aren't laid-back and cool; being uptight and tone-deaf is the worst thing you could ever possibly be." Like, the Stone family isn't portrayed as actually being wrong! They just were maybe insufficiently coy about it, in the movie's eyes, I think.
Weirdly I also kind of liked it, at the time, and also liked it when I recently re-watched it, twenty years later. It's very rare to find media that lays these messages so bare so honestly. I do view it as much closer to a black comedy or a family drama with comedic relief elements than an actual comedy or rom-com though.
I haven't seen it, as I said I'm just going by the synopsis. But there's certainly room there for a deeper digging into "are the Stones really this cool family in truth, or are they just as uptight and repressive, just in a different form that is masked by 'we're all liberal and accepting here'?" By the sound of it, they absolutely did their best to force SJP's character into the mould of what they deemed 'correct', until they managed to break her down to be rebuilt in the acceptable format.
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The Apartment is a banger - excellent taste, zoink. Either you post an analysis by Christmas or I will.
Yes, my OP was thin. I was too blinded by anger and disgust towards Diane Keaton to engage further with the subject matter. You're correct that they are cruel to SJP's character for minor transgressions - but they're also cruel to her for perceived transgressions. This is the interesting Culture War aspect to me. It's a visual depiction of microagressions vs. actual aggression made by people who, I suspect, really did empathize with the family.
If you watch the film closely from the beginning, you'll see that SJP does not have to do anything to be mistreated. They hate her because of who she is. Then they impute motives that did not exist towards actions that were not aimed at them to justify their tribal, insular, elitist behavior. They give this poor woman shit because she uses different kinds of luggage. They've already done more than enough to justify a multi-generational blood feud before they get to the freak out because she suggests that things which cause extra difficulties in life - like being gay in the early 2000s or literally fucking handicapped because you're deaf and Diane Keaton has to throw things at you to get your attention because you are missing a default human sense, things which are disabling are actually bad in some aspects of life you dumb fucks - are things that perhaps should be avoided.
At no point did she denigrate someone for being gay or deaf. At no point did she imply that the gay/deaf people at the table were not worthy of love. But the family reacts based on what they think SJP is saying and are then incapable of hearing her actual words.
They let her make an entire dish with mushrooms and at no point mention that someone in the house has a deadly allergy. This is the allergy sensitivity faction getting their 5 minutes. How dare she not magically divine that he has allergies? The person with the allergy or their family has no obligation to inform others of this important fact. It's everyone else's responsibility to protect the poor baby.
It's implied that she's mocking the deaf man or calling him retarded by speaking slowly and clearly. This is exactly what you're supposed to do to facilitate lip reading. She does not know his fluency at it and she's trying to help him. The framing of the shot lets you know that we're supposed to think SJP is the asshole here.
ETA: There's also a strong Longhouse vibe running throughout. The atrocious behavior towards SJP and the resulting heavenly retribution could have been avoided if Coach wasn't such a pussy in this movie.
However - I think the juicier culture war angles are actually closer to The Apartment than the HR Ladies Home Journal. SJP's boyfriend and his brother are walking manifestations of actual toxic masculinity. They are actual predators who engage in predatory behavior. But the film can't see what it is literally putting on the screen because it thinks they're good people.
The Brother:
The Boyfriend:
And in TFS 2 it's revealed that after he broke up with Younger Sister, Dad swooped in and now she's his step-mom. Awkward! But that just makes for the comedy, right? She's slept with three out of the four Stone men, and is maybe making googly eyes at the gay son, ha ha only joking! Nah, she's having an affair with Amy's Brad, not with Thad, that's where the misunderstanding came in: someone overheard a phone call but it was muffled and they misheard "Brad" for "Thad".
But the affair is okay, they're all bohemian, it's chill, and anyway Amy is exploring the possibility she might be bi so while Brad is getting it on with step-mom-in-law, she's having late night artistic discussions with Original Character who then ends up being third, slightly trashier, girlfriend for Everett.
The Family Stone: all one big happy quasi-incestuous family!
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I just watched the preview for this, and it's funny how quickly red/blue tropes shifted.
When this was made I imagine that the family is meant to be taken as fun loving, goofy, and obviously blue, where as SJP is meant to be taken as stuffy, uptight, and obviously red. (edit: I just read the plout outline and one of the family members is a gay, black, deaf man who adopts a child with his gay lover)
But my initial read when watching the preview was that this was a story about an uptight leftist/frigid/HR/feminist type having to spend the holidays with a bunch of conservatives.
I cheated by reading your comment first, but it seemed this way to me as well.
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