At Wellesley College, in Massachusetts, activists recently demanded that administrators remove a statue of a naked sleepwalking man that they said could “trigger” memories of sexual assault for victims. The song has already been banned at more than 20 British universities. There is a subversive argument being advanced about marriage in the film – that it’s not an institution that can tame women any longerĭepending on your point of view, Hollywood’s timing could not be worse, or better – the movie arrives in the middle of an ongoing conversation about sexual assault in the US military and on college campuses, where what millennials quaintly refer to as “rape culture” has prompted petitions demanding the cancellation of a Robin Thicke concert because the lyrics of his song “Blurred Lines” celebrate “systemic patriarchy and sexual oppression”. I particularly mourn the lack of female villains – good, potent female villains . . . The point is, women have spent so many years girl-powering ourselves – to the point of almost parodic encouragement – we’ve left no room to acknowledge our dark side.” This is what landed Flynn in the crosshairs of feminist critics who have charged the author with peddling “misogynist caricatures”, and “a deep animosity towards women”.įlynn, who also wrote the screenplay, has defended herself, writing on her website: “I’ve grown quite weary of the spunky heroines, brave rape victims, soul-searching fashionistas that stock so many books. The movie’s many twists and turns eventually reveal a sociopathic villainess who is the architect of Nick’s downfall and whose modus operandi, when not framing innocent lunkheads for murder, is fabricating charges of rape. To describe the half that has kicked up controversy is not just to risk spoilers but to embrace them with open arms. “Most women journalists are like, ‘What’s it like playing a jerk.’ Most of the men just go, ‘Yeah.’ ”īut that is only half the story. But after its premiere at the New York Film Festival last week, Affleck noted that it also seemed to act like a gender Rorschach test. That’s the film’s hook: how easy it is to frame someone in the court of public opinion. Taking its cue from the grisly domestic murder trials that have held US cable viewers goggle-eyed – Scott Peterson, Casey Anthony and, of course, OJ Simpson – the story unfolds in a glare of flashbulbs, TV lights and smartphone image grabs, as two-bit pop psychologists and body language experts deduce innocence or guilt from a passing smirk.Īs played by the burly, shifty-looking Affleck in jackets just a shade too tight for him, Nick is one of those guys who is most insincere when telling the truth and picks up suspicion like a stone gathers moss – a media whipping boy par excellence.
The film stars Ben Affleck as Nick Dunne, who loses his job as a magazine writer in New York and has to move back to his home town in Missouri, only to become the number one suspect in a murder investigation when his wife Amy, played by Rosamund Pike, goes missing. Gillian Flynn’s book became a feminist flashpoint as well as a bestseller when it was published in 2012 and this week it arrives in cinemas trailing its own sulphur cloud, thanks to an adaptation by David Fincher, Hollywood’s reigning prince of darkness. On campuses across America, young people of both sexes sport T-shirts reading, “This is what a feminist looks like.” It has become culturally ubiquitous, a pop cultural cliché, and while first-generation feminists may turn up their noses at the sight of Beyoncé dancing in front of a giant, lit-up “Feminist” banner at the MTV Video Music Awards, such ubiquity is a sign of how far their arguments have become part of the mainstream.Īnd then came Gone Girl. Even the phrase itself seems to summon a bygone era in which men and women squared off over the vacuum cleaner, arms crossed like fuming Norman Rockwell figures.įeminism had won the moral, political and cultural arguments, leaving only the law to catch up. Rosamund Pike and Ben Affleck in ‘Gone Girl’ © 20th Century Fox
0 kommentar(er)
