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Christmas Movie Followup

December 28, 2006

A Christmas Story
Buy this DVD

Some people REALLY don’t like A Christmas Story. I don’t know if I feel as strongly as she does about it, but she does hit on some things that help explain why I don’t like watching the film. As a boy’s story with too much nostalgia, it doesn’t have much to say to me.

I especially liked this comment in the resulting comment thread, which discusses why the best movies for women’s roles are found before 1940.

(I found the link via The Heroine Next Door, whom I completely disagree with about Elf.)

8 Responses

Ralf Haring writes:

December 28, 2006 at 4:48 pm

Hmm, blond kid with glasses named Ralphie …. yeah I don’t like the movie either.

The Heroine Next Door writes:

December 29, 2006 at 12:40 am

Just curious, what do you disagree with about Elf?

Johanna writes:

December 29, 2006 at 6:33 am

I’ve enjoyed a number of things Will Ferrell has done, including this movie. I thought it was funny, not stupid, and I know that it has widespread appeal.

Twisty Goes to Camp: A Very Special Episode at I Blame The Patriarchy writes:

December 29, 2006 at 8:50 pm

[...] My method was flawlessly scientific. I consulted SiteMeter for a list of web pages from which I Blame The Patriarchy was recently accessed. From this I determined that most of the no-less-than-a-dozen blogs are a single post at Feministe (interestingly, the next-highest share of referrals belonged to a blog called Comics Worth Reading, which for some reason does not damn me much at all; somewhat further down the food chain I found a forum of bottomfeeding teenage boys who just can’t get over the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, gushing with relish “what is the summery to this shit? Gawd women talk to much”). [...]

Evan Waters writes:

December 31, 2006 at 7:19 pm

One can definitely make a case for the movie affirming a “good old days” view of the world, patriarchy and stereotypical roles for females included, and obviously that doesn’t appeal to everyone, but DAMN that piece is overstating it. When you (using a general “you”, not Johanna-you, obviously) present even a minor case of “failing to subvert sexist structures” as unforgivable hateful misogyny of Dave Sim proportions, it’s kind of hard to take anything of value from the ranting that follows.

I remember ELF being fun. I don’t remember a lot of it, but it was kind of sweet.

Johanna writes:

December 31, 2006 at 10:01 pm

Yeah, it’s over-the-top — but that’s sometimes a side effect of trying to get attention in a pop culture with the volume up at 10. I agree with you about the potential of turning people off from the point.

Greg Shantz writes:

January 4, 2007 at 8:01 am

Evan Waters wrote:

“hateful misogyny of Dave Sim proportions”

There is no evidence Sim is a hateful misogynist.

Johanna writes:

January 4, 2007 at 8:46 am

Do you also think the Earth is flat?

Please don’t drag this into an unrelated thread. Further comments on this subject will be removed.