Queen of Rambles

Am I too easily offended? Is it my depression talking? Or is Love Actually offensive to Americans and women and fat people (of which I am all three). There’s no doubt it’s offensive to Americans. I laughed loudly at the American president’s antics, but I’m sure there are many Americans caught up in the thrall of The War on Terror and everything else that won’t laugh a bit. I was much more offended by the way American women were portrayed–as stupid, vapid sex toys impressed by dirty men with accents. Not impressive.

The thing that really raised my ire had nothing to do with my Americanness. All through the movie they were referring to skinny little women as fat. I just wanted to reach through the screen and strangle someone. At least Hugh Grant’s character questioned this a bit, but not much. How are women supposed to ever build up their self-esteem or have a good body-image if little size 6 girlies are called fat? Why do we allow the media to do this? Why do actresses agree to such scripts? I guess they’ll do anything to be famous or be in the movies. I guess I can sit in my computer chair and spew forth all sorts of rage on the subject, but what would I really do if someone offered me a part in a movie? Fame, fortune. . . fat? It’s never going to happen so I can sit back and offer up judgements.

Then there was the treatment of women. Mike says he didn’t see it and I probably am over-reacting, but in general I just didn’t get a real positive view of the female sex from this movie. I suppose there were a couple of women that were ok, but I felt that the writers or directors had a secret disdain for women that they were barely holding in check. I felt like they were sending out little sharp daggers that they were hoping no one would see but that were intended to undermine. Me, paranoid? Perhaps.

The whole movie just sent off a really bad vibe. There were some parts that were romantic and sweet, but overall it was too offensive for me to take seriously. Plus there were too many stories going on. It was all over the place and they did tie most of it up at the end, but I think it would have been better to focus on just a couple romances, but then I guess they couldn’t have had such a broad spectrum of stars. It had someone for everyone so I guess that’s how they intend to draw in a big audience. Snape fans have Allen Rickman (though he is nothing like Snape). There’s Mister Bean (people were laughing but I didn’t see anything funny). Hugh Grant. Emma Thompson. That girl from Pirates of the Caribbean.

But it’s still an offensive movie in my book.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2003 at 11:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.