what i'm just not that into: millionaire edition

recently i ventured out to the old movie house for viewings of the ken kwapis film he's just not that into you and the danny boyle award machine slumdog millionaire. and while on the surface i enjoyed these films as they are both fairly enjoyable,(i rated both three stars on netflix)both films left me with some concern as to what, in essence, they were saying to their audience as the underlying messages behind their twisting plots seems a bit dangerous in both cases.

the kwapis film based on the book of the same name plays like your standard treatise on romance. there is really no new ground broken here as it pretty much sticks to the well worn template of modern romantic comedy. aside from the performance of the incredibly honest and refreshingly nuanced bradley cooper, the bits and pieces that make up this film seem pretty mired in the traditional tropes of the genre. and i suppose that is where my problem begins.

the thing that i don't really get about the film is its insistence that as long as these rather intelligent women, most of whom are portrayed as fairly successful in their professional lives, do not have a man in their life that they are somehow failures...or at least, that is how they view themselves. i found the typically delightful ginnifer goodwin to be carrying much of this burden in the film and i found myself just wanting to smack some sense into her, to tell her that her life is not incomplete without a man and that she shouldn't let that define her self worth, but in the diegetic realm of this film that warning would have just gone unheeded.

what i find most problematic, however, is how the audience which was comprised of 90% women between the ages of 15-30 were eating this shit up. i mean really? they don't mind that this film(and it should be pointed out, male director) feel that their entire sense of self worth is caught up in the quality of man that they snag? whatever happened to "women are doing it for themselves?" it bothers me that, unlike men, the women portrayed in this film have their overall notion of their life as a success defined not by their own personal accomplishments, but by who they are shacking up with. i think that is a dangerous message to put out into the world, not to mention an antiquated one that is basically turning back the pages of feminism.

according to the social philosophy of this film, a woman could find the cure for cancer, but as long as she is single she will be an utter wreck and a failure. and that my friends, is a shitty message to send to the young ladies of the world.

for all its critical acclaim, danny boyle's slumdog millionaire is just as guilty of sending similar bad messages which reinforce idiotic cultural stereotypes. that being said, i enjoyed slumdog too. its kinetic energy and rushes of color are almost too powerful as to give me any choice other than to be arrested by his brand of cinema on the run. but again, i find some things need hashing out.

as a midwesterner(see: not worldly) i find that there is an inherent danger in the hype machines insistence that i go see the exoticised violence of films like slumdog and city of god as i feel that for a lot of film goers this will be their first taste of india and brazil respectively. with that in mind, i feel it is important for artists to fully understand what kind of ideas they are putting out there, and in this case i feel that mr. boyle does not.

boyle's film(charles dickens by way of eli roth)presents a view of india as a torture laden place where corruption runs roughshod throughout all levels of society. slumdog makes a point of showing a brutal, corrupt, poverty stricken india as it serves as a counterpoint to the improbability of his story. however for many people, who have never been to india or seen a bollywood film(let alone sampled the humanist faire of satayajit ray) this film is giving them an idea of india as reinforcing another stereotype of the third world. by eschewing the representation of the more positive aspects of the culture(bright religious ceremony, strong family ties) boyle has essentially laid out a portrait of india as nothing more than savagery to the nth degree, and that is just not the truth, at least not the whole truth.

but unfortunately for many, they will never get to understand the richness of the culture as the oscar hype machine only tends to pimp out films that take place in india once every 30 or so years(and then only by british directors...colonialism anyone?) for quite a few, this may be the only feel that they ever get of india, in a similar way that city of god is the only taste they have had of brazil (outside of the utterly tasty brazillian grill)and to judge these countries in the ways represented in these films is a tragedy.

it makes me wonder about, what, if any, responsibility an artist has to their subject and setting...kwapis and boyle obviously feel no responsibility to anything other than what serves their story best, no matter what kind of negative shit they are putting out into the world.