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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.)
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?
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 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).
I’m not sure they’re that crafty, man. My theory is really that they are emotionally little girls, and they just don’t want boy’s pee-pees in their waa-waas. ‘that’s disgusting, how could my friends agree to that?‘ And so it’s all rape. Even among non-radfems, there is a substantial minority of women who just do not like sex at all.
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