The best of your comments on the latest films and music
"We as a society are far too hard on teenage girls." said Fridaycat last week. "Unlike boys, girls are to be controlled, opinionated on, observed, judged. They mustn't be too slutty or prudish, smart or stupid, honest or manipulative, funny or boring for starters. Teenage boys can do whatever they please, almost without exception, because 'boys will be boys', and they are given considerable leeway to find their own voice while making any number of embarrassing mistakes along the way."
Fridaycat was responding approvingly to Anne Billson's column about the Twilight movies, in which she suggested that perhaps they got a harder time at the hands of critics than movies aimed squarely at teenage boys ? and noted that they were pretty much the only mainstream movies that considered girls' sexuality from the perspective of an actual girl.
"You want to know why everybody slags it off?" responded Amberulfr. "Well, it's an awful storyline based on a book that is horrendously written. (I once tried to read the books and I thought my soul was going to bleed.) It features the most godawful acting the world has ever seen, and those godawful actors are portraying some of the most irritating and two-dimensional characters in all of film and literature."
Hol48 had a more nuanced complaint about the films: "My objection to Twilight has never been that it actually addresses the fantasies of teenage girls. It's that it does it in a way which treats them as shameful, and as if they're terrible temptresses driving boys to bad things. If you make a move, it's your own fault if he hurts you, because you tempted him too much. In the case of Breaking Dawn, the married Bella is still being chastised by Edward after their wedding night, because it shouldn't have happened ? right before some more sex about five minutes later. Your sexual drives are only OK in the context of marriage, and marriage is some kind of bargaining chip/pressure point ? 'I will only do what you want if you marry me first, despite your obvious aversion to it.'"
The real problem, reckoned indiechic, lies in the range of opportunities for boys and girls portrayed in teen movies: "Boys' films ? Save the world, get the girl. Girls' films ? Get the boy. That's it. That is the sum total of your aspirations, ladies: get the boy, by whatever means possible: change your clothes, change your hair, cook, clean, prented to die, learn to dance, become one of the cool kids, or date a vampire: whatever it takes, just so long as you do it to get the boy. Then, you are done."
We don't usually encourage discussion of wrestling beneath album reviews. But then we don't usually review albums whose purpose is, as stated in their title, to provide "psychedelic meditations on British wrestling of the 1970s and early 1980s" ? which is what Luke Haines does on his new album, reviewed last week by Alexis Petridis. "The unmasking of Kendo Nagasaki was spectacularly memorable moment in my childhood. Watching it back now on YouTube, it's a bit underwhelming and comical. It's like watching an old Doctor Who episode with its poor special effects. You had to use your imagination to make the whole event seem more terrifying than it actually was, which in the case of Doctor Who was a bit of tinfoil on a stick being waved about, or in the case of British wrestling, two old, overweight, out of breath guys in nappies and capes play-fighting," recalled drygoni. Tread lightly, though, for when you recall that moment, you tread on whiteyed's dreams: "Don't agree with this ? the unmasking of Kendo Nagasaki is up there with the collapse of the Roman empire."
Remind me to tell you one day about the time a BBC newsreader asked, on air, if I'd like to say a few words to mark the passing of Big Daddy.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/dec/01/readers-reviews-twilight
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