May. 1st, 2004 10:21 pm
Rambling Review
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textualdevianceI finally got around to seeing Mona Lisa Smile. While there were parts of it that kind of made me roll my eyes (and I still can't stand Julia Roberts) it was actually better than I'd expected it would be. Kirsten Dunst was very good, in fact, and I now have a raging crush on Maggie Gyllenhaal. It even brought a bit of a tear at the end.
The "message" as it were is pretty blatantly obvious, but there were subtleties to it I didn't expect. There were a few of those, however, that disturbed me. The concept of "the fat girl" pining away for love, for instance, really bothered me. 1. She wasn't the least bit fat. If they wanted to emphasize that point, they should've gotten an actress with at least another 20-30 lbs. 2. It assumed that because she was "fat" that her goals in life should necessarily be different than the goals of the other girls. The idea of her pining away for love was given a pass, when the same thing, had it been done by a thinner character, certainly wouldn't have been. I guess the theory is that career is all the fat girls have to look forward to, because they'll never get a man, so let's give her her real dream. Bleh.
The other thing that bothered me was the little speech with Julia Stiles' character where she insisted that being married and having babies was what she really wanted, and the choice she was really making, and, even in the face of someone telling her that yes, she could do both family and career, she said she'd rather be home with her family. Now, I can sort of understand why they put that in there. There's a fairly big movement these days of "stay at home by choice," and I think they were trying to get across the message that women should all be able to exercise their own choices, whatever those choices may be, but I think that's actually a dangerously glib message. I wish there had been some element in that storyline of real concern for her future, even though it was clear she and her husband really were in love (unlike Kirsten Dunst's character's screwed up marriage.)
It also really seemed like the men in the story were given very short shrift. The female characters, of course, were the protagonists, but I don't think that's an excuse for making nearly all the male characters broad stereotypes, especially when the movie was more than long enough to have changed that. One of the things I wish had been said about the situation above, for instance, was something to the effect of "Well, what about your husband? Aren't you concerned that he won't know his family, either?" I guess that concept may have been considered anachronistic though, maybe.
If I were a social engineer, I'd make all jobs three-quarter time. That way both parents can work, they make more together than a single full time job would, and both have plenty of time to spend with their kids. It also eliminates that whole latchkey kid problem, too. Give most adult "day" jobs the same basic hours as school hours, and whaddaya know? Finally parents get to actually interact with their kids instead of parking them in front of the Playstation because everyone's too tired and cranky to converse without bitching at each other. I think more parents who currently stay at home would re-enter the workforce and easily take up the two hours of missing slack-- all it would take is one for every three, after all -- and I think productivity would actually go up because people would get more rest and have more free time. Theoretically, the 8 hour workday is supposed to be an equal division of a 24 hour day: 8 for sleep, 8 for work, 8 for play, but in modern practice, that's definitely not the case. The normal "office hours" workday is no longer 9 to 5, but 8 to 5 (with an unpaid lunch hour) and most people who work in large metropolitan areas have an at least 30 minute commute each way, and often more like an hour. Add in the time necessary to get ready for work, and the supposed 8 hour workday is actually more like 12. And that doesn't even count the overtime most people put in these days, too. That gives people only four hours a day to spend with their families, run errands, eat dinner, do essential household cleaning/maintenance, have a bit of reading or tv or other wind-down entertainment, deal with the mail, feed the dog, and crawl into bed. Sex optional, if you're not already too tired. Is it any wonder the divorce rate is so high and kids are running amok? People don't have time to even eat nutritiously, much less interact with their families. And this isn't solved by having one parent stay at home while the other works, either. All that does is isolate the parents from each other, and ensure that they live in such separate worlds for the vast majority of their day that within 10 years they no longer know each other anymore. It also isolates the working parent from their children. Several generations of kids grew up not knowing their fathers. Several generations of fathers never knew their kids. Several fathers have affairs with women they know in their work environment because they're never home to socialize with their wife, and when they are, she's become a completely different person from not leaving the house all day and they can no longer relate to her. How, exactly, is that family-friendly?
Obviously, it does kids no good to be raised by strangers, but the way things are currently set up, their father is usually a stranger to them anyway. So if both parents worked 6 hour days (probably more like 8 or 9, in actual practice) that would give them far more time to spend with their kids and each other, would give each of them an independent career/lifepath of their own, and would vastly cut down on overall stress. Doesn't that make sense?
The "message" as it were is pretty blatantly obvious, but there were subtleties to it I didn't expect. There were a few of those, however, that disturbed me. The concept of "the fat girl" pining away for love, for instance, really bothered me. 1. She wasn't the least bit fat. If they wanted to emphasize that point, they should've gotten an actress with at least another 20-30 lbs. 2. It assumed that because she was "fat" that her goals in life should necessarily be different than the goals of the other girls. The idea of her pining away for love was given a pass, when the same thing, had it been done by a thinner character, certainly wouldn't have been. I guess the theory is that career is all the fat girls have to look forward to, because they'll never get a man, so let's give her her real dream. Bleh.
The other thing that bothered me was the little speech with Julia Stiles' character where she insisted that being married and having babies was what she really wanted, and the choice she was really making, and, even in the face of someone telling her that yes, she could do both family and career, she said she'd rather be home with her family. Now, I can sort of understand why they put that in there. There's a fairly big movement these days of "stay at home by choice," and I think they were trying to get across the message that women should all be able to exercise their own choices, whatever those choices may be, but I think that's actually a dangerously glib message. I wish there had been some element in that storyline of real concern for her future, even though it was clear she and her husband really were in love (unlike Kirsten Dunst's character's screwed up marriage.)
It also really seemed like the men in the story were given very short shrift. The female characters, of course, were the protagonists, but I don't think that's an excuse for making nearly all the male characters broad stereotypes, especially when the movie was more than long enough to have changed that. One of the things I wish had been said about the situation above, for instance, was something to the effect of "Well, what about your husband? Aren't you concerned that he won't know his family, either?" I guess that concept may have been considered anachronistic though, maybe.
If I were a social engineer, I'd make all jobs three-quarter time. That way both parents can work, they make more together than a single full time job would, and both have plenty of time to spend with their kids. It also eliminates that whole latchkey kid problem, too. Give most adult "day" jobs the same basic hours as school hours, and whaddaya know? Finally parents get to actually interact with their kids instead of parking them in front of the Playstation because everyone's too tired and cranky to converse without bitching at each other. I think more parents who currently stay at home would re-enter the workforce and easily take up the two hours of missing slack-- all it would take is one for every three, after all -- and I think productivity would actually go up because people would get more rest and have more free time. Theoretically, the 8 hour workday is supposed to be an equal division of a 24 hour day: 8 for sleep, 8 for work, 8 for play, but in modern practice, that's definitely not the case. The normal "office hours" workday is no longer 9 to 5, but 8 to 5 (with an unpaid lunch hour) and most people who work in large metropolitan areas have an at least 30 minute commute each way, and often more like an hour. Add in the time necessary to get ready for work, and the supposed 8 hour workday is actually more like 12. And that doesn't even count the overtime most people put in these days, too. That gives people only four hours a day to spend with their families, run errands, eat dinner, do essential household cleaning/maintenance, have a bit of reading or tv or other wind-down entertainment, deal with the mail, feed the dog, and crawl into bed. Sex optional, if you're not already too tired. Is it any wonder the divorce rate is so high and kids are running amok? People don't have time to even eat nutritiously, much less interact with their families. And this isn't solved by having one parent stay at home while the other works, either. All that does is isolate the parents from each other, and ensure that they live in such separate worlds for the vast majority of their day that within 10 years they no longer know each other anymore. It also isolates the working parent from their children. Several generations of kids grew up not knowing their fathers. Several generations of fathers never knew their kids. Several fathers have affairs with women they know in their work environment because they're never home to socialize with their wife, and when they are, she's become a completely different person from not leaving the house all day and they can no longer relate to her. How, exactly, is that family-friendly?
Obviously, it does kids no good to be raised by strangers, but the way things are currently set up, their father is usually a stranger to them anyway. So if both parents worked 6 hour days (probably more like 8 or 9, in actual practice) that would give them far more time to spend with their kids and each other, would give each of them an independent career/lifepath of their own, and would vastly cut down on overall stress. Doesn't that make sense?
