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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 15, 2025

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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.