Movie Tropes That Get On My Nerves

First off, let me just say, I am all for watching movies. It’s one of my favorite hobbies, right up there with reading and cooking. If I watch a movie, unless it’s terrible, I usually can finish the movie. However, movies with themes that involve weak females will ruin that movie immediately. I just want to know why? Like, did you really have to lean so far into the stereotype did you have to lean to get this movie made?

Especially movies that are trying for that slice of life feel, starting out with business as usual, friends out on the town, until some major/global catastrophe hits and throws this group of people/town/nation into chaos. How do these people make it out alive/survive/deal in the face of adversity?

Well, nothing annoys me more than watching a movie where the female character(s) does NOTHING but cower in fear, spends the movie catatonic with indecision and terror. This is especially true if any males in the movie, prior to the major catastrophe, are engaged in some form of group activity that only showcases the juxtaposition of their nonchalance (otherwise known as– lack of genius) such as visiting a strip club, getting drunk at a bar/club, hittin’ on some hoes…etc.

However, their mental prowess in the face of adversity will somehow always emerge in the front of an alien attack/natural disaster/major catastrophe. Their gal pals, in turn, are rendered clueless/incoherent/irrational at the same time. The females will be shown quaking in fear and hiding behind their boyfriends, gripping onto them for dear life.  Even better, in lieu of actually doing anything to help with their survival, they will argue and fuss against all ideas to do SOMETHING that might help, but offer no real help, or constructive criticism. That is so helpful and realistic!

This rant was catalyzed from watching ONLY the preview to the movie “The Darkest Hour“. I have not seen the movie yet, and at first I was mildly interested when I had read the premise of an alien invasion and human survival, but as I watched the preview again today I just had to ask, WTF? So many movies follow this objectifying trope, and I am reminded of another waste of my life, the movie Skyline. I watched Skyline with great hopes. In the end I was flabbergasted to understand where it all went wrong in the script and how anyone could have wasted money making it into a movie.

The Darkest Hour might not be so one-sided and chauvinistic as the trailer makes it out to be. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t watched it yet. The trailer may have just portrayed what the clip editor wanted to portray, or been geared to the intended target audience of single 18-35 year old males. WHO knows? What I do know, is that this kind of visual crap is the garbage that just chaps my hide.

Why does this bug me so much? Well, it’s not because I’m some militant pro-active member of the anti-penis peoples party. But rather it’s a long standing observation of the dichotomy of the lives of women vs the lives of men in our present world. Some drawn from personal experience and observation. Some just from the annals of history that have led to our present social clime. Having suffered in my youth as an undervalued teenage girl, I am very sensitive to the roles that portrayed in popular media, in the social culture’s attempt to desensitize females to the injustice being thrust upon us on a daily basis. Fuck that shit. That’s my general feeling about all of that.

So yeah, I am going to watch this movie, rented for free with a coupon from redbox probably, and I am going to see if it indeed is going to join the list of crap that gets on my nerves and is therefore banned for life from my home. Just like the movie “Skyline”.