Secondary Research - Romantic Comedy Video 2

Secondary Research - Romantic Comedy Video

Secondary Research - Today Programme Transcript

Transcript Today Programme

BBC Radio 4 – Today Programme 11/02/09

Presented by Edward Stourton and Evan Davis.

Section of the show in which feminist historian Diane Purkiss and Stacey Abbott, of Roehampton University, discuss women in Hollywood films.

Are women in Hollywood movies dumb and getting dumber? If you go to the cinema then you could be forgiven for thinking that all they care about are boys, weddings and shopping. Titles like; ‘confessions of a shopaholic’ and ‘Bride wars’ demonstrate the point, but Diane Purkiss is a feminist historian at Keebel College Oxford and with me in studio is also Stacey Abbott who is a lecturer and teacher in TV and film studies at Roehampton University, Good Morning to you both

Women: Good morning, good morning

Edward: Diane Purkiss, light weight depictions of women in movies, is that a new thing do you think?

Diane: No but I think what’s new is very dumb heroines in movies, everyone’s searching for fun when they go to the cinema most of the time anyway, but it’s hard to have much fun when your watching a shopping obsessed, credit card-aholic with an eating disorder, who’s incapable of walking down a hall without falling over.

E: Is that?...Are you being a bit selective there in the films that you’re looking at because there are a couple of films of course with stronger women in and I think you need to look at some that have been recently written, Juno, that stands out for me as a very strong depiction of a woman in a youngish woman, a teen woman...

D: Definitely, and I am a great supporter of Juno and Little Miss Sunshine where the mother character is bizarrely not a psychotic even though it’s a child centred movie. Nevertheless what I’m talking about is movies like Bride Wars and Confessions of a Shopaholic, He’s just not that into you, movies like the unbelievably awful ‘totty and the notty’ featuring Paris Hilton. I mean these are movies that progressively portray women as obsessed with getting a man in the first instance and after that with maxing out their credit cards and securing a pair of Gucci boots on sale, I’m sorry but I don’t enjoy being forced into an identification with those women by the dynamic of cinema, I don’t believe those women are me, or even in my aspirations, what’s wrong with sassy, strong, intelligent women with goals outside the shopping mall?

E: Men don’t like watching them as much....before we discuss that provocative comment I just made, Stacey Abbott is it a trend that women are like this?

S: I think it has always been an area of Hollywood cinema, particularly the romantic comedy while I’m not really going to disagree with some of the comments and so I’m not going to come on this programme and be one of the defenders for this, but I do think that Hollywood has often taken a lot of comedic pleasure from this dumb heroine and sometimes has undercut that and played with that quite cleverly and I think as some like Judy Holiday played with being dumb but not quite dumb and I mean I’m not sure how new it is, I think of the shopping, I think of the Pretty Woman and the emphasis upon her empowerment of being given a credit card with no limit to go reinvent herself as this proper heroine, so how new is this, I don’t know, because it’s always been there

E: What strikes me, Diane Purkiss, you are like so many people that some on this programme looking back to a Golden age in one way or another and if we melt down all these ages we could save the banking system with all this gold, but it is just film isn’t it, people go for escapist nonsense sometimes and that’s what film makers make

D: I’m all for escapist nonsense, but I think there’s a difference between escapist nonsense and being insulted and hit on the head for a film that you pay good money to see, and I think it’s absolutely the case that I want intelligent entertainment and this doesn’t mean I want to go and see a movie about a holocaust survivor on a Friday night after a tough day at work, I sometimes want a movie that’s funny and witty and fast paced, but I don’t think the movies that I’ve just sighted are any of those things, I think they are just a raw insult. Why is it that we are so dogged with movies in which the female protagonist has these characteristics of obsessive dieting, obsession with a man whom the audience conceive as worthless, shopping obsessions...

E: I made the comment about, that’s what men want to go and see, is there something in the fact that, what is it?, ninety percent of Hollywood films are written by men and most of them are directed by men

D: Absolutely, and without harking back to a Golden age I think it’s dismal that women in movie making have managed to make such little progress in the industry, I mean in the Golden age there were many women directors and there was about as many women directors as there are now

E: How about a comment from Stacey, is it very dominated by men in the production?

S: I think it is still very dominated and I think that influences the kind of representations that there are of women and there are a increasing number of women who, I mean I have mixed feelings about Mamma Mia as a chic flick, but it is a film that has such a strong female input, you know directors, writers, creators, and you see these films and how cinema is having an input on women and a lot but not all mean understand that.

E: Thank you Stacey and Diane

Confessions of a Shopaholic Trailer

In the trailer, in what way is the main character portrayed? e.g Strong female, air headed etc
PLEASE COMMENT YOUR ANSWERS BELOW

Comparing the representation of women in specific American and British romantic comedies

The films I will be looking at are;

• Bridget Jones' Diary
• Bend it like Beckham
• The devil wears Prada
• Confessions of a Shopaholic