Archive | Film Matters

In Kate Bolick’s wonderful new book Spinster, she meditates on the possibilities of an adult female life undefined by others. “The spinster wish was my private shorthand for the novel pleasures of being alone,” she writes. “Whether to be married or to be single is a false binary. The space in which I’ve always wanted to live… isn’t between those two poles but beyond it.” Her point–a vital one–is that here in the twenty-first century women should no longer be viewed through the lens of their attachment to others. (Remember that men remain “misters” their entire adult lives, regardless of their age or marital status.)

We need only to look at cinema to realize how far we are from a world in which, as Bolick puts it, a woman is “free to consider the long scope of her life as her distinct self.” Put simply, women in films are never contentedly unattached. They may be single– but tragically or darkly comically so, as if they’re suffering from a condition that requires treatment. And make no mistake: that treatment is almost always a relationship. Hollywood is built upon the twin tenets of big guns and big love, and it’s generally uncomfortable with ambiguity, especially when it comes to single ladies. Happy endings–the glamorous finality of “Jack shall have his Jill”–are what the movie doctor ordered. Unattached women are either Bridget Jones types—not-so-hot messes who must be rescued by modern Mr. Darcys—or dangerously untamed women who must die, as Glenn Close does in “Fatal Attraction” and Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon do in “Thelma and Louise.” Far, far less common are films that conclude with women who are joyously, consciously unattached–not as a last-ditch solution to a toxic romance (“Heathers”) or a love triangle (“St Elmo’s Fire,” “Broadcast News”) but as an active choice to live independently. Continue Reading →