I mentioned last week that my husband and I watched one of our favorite guilty pleasure movies Pacific Rim, and we kept the nostalgia going this week by re-watching 21. It’s been a while since we revisited this one, and I have to say, it didn’t age all that well for me.
We originally saw it in the theater in 2008, and I was a bit swept up in the witty banter, the opulence of Vegas, and the sexiness of young beautiful people with tons of money to burn. Who wouldn’t want to make love pressed against a window overlooking the dazzling lights of the strip? Every time I see the movie, it makes me want to hop a plane to Vegas to recreate their fun…and their youth.
I remember when I talked my best friend into watching Pacific Rim with me, spouting what a feminist movie it was. Look! A girl who can do everything the boys can do! But she rebuffed me, saying there were only TWO girls in that film, and their roles revolved around violence - kill the kaijus! They were women conforming to a man’s world instead of bringing the beautiful variations of the female experience to the movie.
This was years later, though, years after I had watched and re-watched both Pacific Rim and 21. So originally, when I saw 21, I had the same misguided feelings. Look! Girls that are as smart as the boys are! Good job, movie!
I’m embarrassed to admit that it was only this last viewing where I started to realize how entirely not feminist this movie is.
Watching it this time, all I could hear was Kevin Spacey’s Micky Rosa belittling the girls on his team every chance he gets. He says on more than one occasion that he doesn’t trust the girls, which we can only infer means that he thinks women are too emotional, since the main quality he looks for in his “big players” is keeping emotion at bay. Which is funny enough, since Mickey, Ben, and Fisher - the “big players” - are nothing but emotion, playing poorly when they’re sad, or making a scene when they feel threatened, or storming out when things don’t go their way.
We see no such emotions out the girls, mostly because they just exist in the background - they’re not even really part of the story - but in paying them no attention, the movie has this great unspoken irony. It’s “common knowledge” that all women are emotional, so no need to show it, right? (EYE ROLL) In the film’s negligence of feminine stories, what we see is a bunch of baby men throwing tantrums and a couple of cool, detached women just doing their jobs.
Just knowing this irony exists, though, is not enough for me, because I didn’t see that irony until 15 years later. People are going to take away what’s right in front of them - the droning message that women are too emotional - instead of the inferred buried message that, no, men can be just as emotional, if not more so. It’s why a man in our society can still get people to back them over a woman, because it’s “common knowledge” that women are too emotional for important jobs, even if the women can keep their cool and the big baby men throw tantrums (thinking specifically of one past president). People see men throwing tantrums and label it passion. People see women shed a single tear and label it emotion. One is good and the other is not.
Instead of wanting to hop a plane to Vegas after this re-watching, I wanted this movie to take an all-expenses-paid trip to the bottom of the trash can. It had been a while since we watched it, and I think it’ll be while, if ever, when we watch it again.
In keeping with the theme of re-watching things, I stumbled upon this essay by Kelly Shetron on LitHub called “Skeletons in the Closet: On Mad Men and White America’s Willful Amnesia”. We found Mad Men super late in the game, and I can confidently say I won’t be re-watching it ever. It was good, sure, and I guess I’m glad I watched it, but for me, it’s a one-and-done. Not so for Kelly Shetron, and she had some interesting insights to share on her third time through, mostly about how America excuses all its bad behaviors.
Don Draper said aloud why, today, so many white Americans can’t tolerate “critical race theory” or comprehend the costs of an overturned Roe. We live in the land of forgetting. Ask not about Cuba. Ask not about the bomb.
- Kelly Shetron
And if that’s not enough nostalgia for you, I was planning my husband’s and my anniversary trip this summer to New York City, when I stumbled upon a new musical hitting Broadway: Back to the Future. Seeing as this is in the top five of both my husband’s and my favorite movies of all time list, we immediately added it to our trip’s itinerary.
It’s either going to be really good or really bad, and I can’t wait to find out which!
This week saw the first day of spring, and I was surprised how many people reminded me of that on Monday. Us Michiganders are always ready for winter to be over, but the crazy ups and downs of this particular season has us all craving it more than usual. March came in like a lamb, but taking at a look at the forecast for the next week, looks like, for once, it might also go out like a lamb. Highs above 40 for every day. Woot!
My daughter thought if she dressed like a butterfly, the other butterflies at the botanical gardens would think she was one of them and land on her. None did, but she gets an A for effort.
What I’m Watching:
We haven’t only been watching old stuff. We watched some new stuff, too. We checked out The Reluctant Traveler with Eugene Levy on Apple TV. It was formulaic but heartwarming, and even though Maldives was already on my bucket list, it’s definitely moved up in priority since watching that episode. I can see the negotiations Eugene must have made when this show came about: “Okay, fine, I’ll go wherever you want but you better put me up in some pretty outstanding hotels.” Spoiler alert: the hotels are pretty outstanding.
What I’m Reading:
I stumbled upon The Banned Bookshop of Maggie Banks by Shauna Robinson, and it’s hard for me to resist uplit that takes place in a bookstore, so I gave it a try. It was 100% adorable, and I wish there were events where authors reimagined classics in different genres. I would happily pay the $10 admittance for a night of Moby dick jokes.
The “question of the week” at work brought about a surprising number of people who wish to haunt others. I mean, a large percentage of my coworkers want to haunt both enemies and friends. And I should be surprised…but I’m totally not. Librarians, amiright?
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