Don’t believe Hollywood’s sexual fantasies about female journalists
Dont believe Hollywoods sexual fantasies about female journalists
In the movies, we jump into bed with practically every interviewee. Strange how the men dont get that treatment
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I was now more intrigued by his amazement at my failure to shag on the job than the prospect of a celebrity trying to seduce me. Was this yet another part of journalism Id somehow missed out on, like learning shorthand? No, of course not. (Seriously, have you seen most journalists? No ones trying to sleep with us as a demographic, were a riposte to Darwinism.) But I eventually understood my friends amazement: among all the lessons to be gleaned from Hollywood movies, there are few that have become as established as the idea that female journalists have sex with the people theyre writing about.
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In 1940s His Girl Friday, Hildy Johnson was so engrossed in her work, she didnt even notice the romantic machinations around her masterminded by her ex-husband and he was played by Cary Grant, for heavens sake. Now, the idea that female journalists work by spreading their legs has become so established, it is damn near a trope.
Whereas male journalists in movies work by using their malicious minds (Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler) or unimpeachable morality (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the Presidents Men, George Clooney and David Strathairn in Good Night and Good Luck), their female counterparts use a part of their anatomy that has nothing to do with their brain. Sometimes they do it to get a story, sometimes it just happens because, well, thats what its like being a female journalist: you go to the office and, next thing you know, your knickers are around your ankles.
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To a certain extent, the depiction of female journalists in films reflects how movies in general belittle women who work these days. Womens jobs, todays Hollywood movies imply, are a mere hurdle they need to scale before discovering the meaning of life (marriage). But the Hollywood obsession with female journalists sex lives feels especially ridiculous as there are few professionals who film folk encounter more than journalists. So this idea that female journalists are all just dying to jump into bed with them is a fascinating insight into certain film-makers tragic sexual fantasies.
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/29/hollywood-sexual-fantasies-female-journalists-sex-lives
DavidDvorkin
(19,504 posts)Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Sarah Palin comes to mind...
closeupready
(29,503 posts)For all the talk about how Hollywood is sexist (and I agree, it is), how do its sharpest critics on that metric account for the fact that wealthy actresses will agree to portray these characters who shed such an unflattering (I presume that's the point here, that this is unflattering to female journalists?) light on female journalists? I mean, it can't be, as with Marilyn Monroe on her scandalous-for-then Playboy centerfold, "I was hungry".
Additionally, I don't recall Faye Dunaway sleeping with William Holden in 1976's "Network". Perhaps we have become a hyper-sexualized culture, in which every film must contain nudity and sexual situations...?