The girls were watching Princess Bride the other day

[conuly]

I used to like that movie just as much as the next person - it is very quotable, after all - but one day, apropos of absolutely nothing, I looked around and said "That movie is really pretty misogynistic, isn't it?" and ever since then I haven't been able to get into it. I can watch the occasional scene, but I can't see it the whole way through.

I don't say this because I want to be argued out of my position, or because I want to convince you of it, just because that's how it went. One day I could watch that movie and the next day - never again!

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Comments

[alasse_irena]

I didn't ever develop the nostalgia for Princess Bride that a lot of my friends seem to have. I remember struggling to make it through the book when I was about 13, and later on watching the movie and being fairly unhappy with the Eternal Love that Westley and Buttercup have founded on pretty much nothing (though I think in hindsight the story is gently poking fun at that kind of thing, and I just missed the joke).

But yes, I feel you. Princess Bride has some...less palateable elements.

[conuly]

PB is one of those rare, rare artifacts where I prefer the movie to the book (and always have) even if I can no longer watch the movie, so I'm not surprised you didn't like it if you encountered the book first.

[brithistorian]

Wow - great selection of links today. I've got about half a dozen of these saved in Pocket to read while taking L. to get his allergy shot this morning.

[conuly]

Have fun with the shot. Ouch!

[chelseagirl]

There was a lovely cartoon that was going around after Wonder Woman came out, with Robin Wright dressed as Antiope rescuing Westley.

[conuly]

Do you have a link?

[hudebnik]

No, one doesn't watch "Princess Bride" for the strong, self-actualized and motivated female role-model characters. I made my peace with that a long time ago.

Of course, one doesn't read Lord of the Rings for the strong, self-actualized and motivated female role-model characters -- or female characters at all.

If you need a palate-cleanser, try "Enchanted" or "Brave". "Enchanted" has the unpalatable trope of the leading man ditching his older, less-pretty, sort-of-boring girlfriend for a younger, prettier one, but the former comes out OK herself, and the latter is reasonably bright, is the protagonist rather than just an object, and undergoes real character development.

[mindstalk]

LotR has Eowyn and Galadriel. Small parts of the book, but high impact. Plus Ioreth, Lobelia, Rose, and Arwen for other women who at least exist. Aragorn's mom in the appendices, though IIRC she mostly gives birth and dies.

"And Shelob".

Hobbit OTOH has exactly 0 identified women, though IIRC it did start as bedtime stories for his sons, so it's almost literally Boys Adventure For Boys. Silmarillion goes the other way.

[conuly]

I made my peace with it too. By not watching it. *shrugs*

[archangelbeth]

I kind of love Brave. But mostly because the mom has a pretty big character arc as well, and some bad@$$ stuff to do. (Disclaimer: I am a mom.) And also looks EXACTLY LIKE A FRIEND OF OURS, HAIR AND ROBE AND ALL. O_O (Well, when said friend is costumed for conventions, anyway.)

(I thought the First Girlfriend was pretty, in Enchanted! Just differently pretty. IIRC the movie.)

[spikethemuffin]

I'm more Howl's Moving Castle for palate-cleansing, book or movie, although book is to be preferred. Or Spirited Away. But I loved how first-girlfriend was actually someone's True Love and found her place, too. How often do you see the women who were designed to be cast off as part of a character arc valued and appreciated?

[landofnowhere]

The book of Princess Bride is even more blatantly misogynistic: the narrator in the frame story clearly has some serious issues with women. I don't want to read the book again, but in some sense it's better that it wears the misogyny on its sleeve, rather than sneaking it in sugar-coated.

[lydy]

I adore the book and purely hate the movie. The book is pretty terrible about women. And yet, since the book is about the myths and lies we tell ourselves, why these are simultaneously necessary and damaging, I tend to roll the underlying misogyny into that as one of the stories men tell themselves to get through the day that creates contradictory results. Also, while Buttercup isn't _much_ better in the book, she does at least have an internal landscape and some agency. Also, the places where her lack of agency are dictated are looked at by the author with genuine horror, so there's that.

[pauraque]

I never cared much for The Princess Bride, though I don't think I was aware of the misogyny as a kid so I can't pin the blame on that. It was just never really my thing somehow, and I've gotten used to people being completely aghast when they find out I don't like it. :P

[conuly]

Even if you weren't consciously aware of the misogyny, that doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't part of the reason you didn't like it.

[thewayne]

Yeah, sadly William Goldman is rather old school. All of his movies have very little agency for women.

[conuly]

Not cool.

[oracleofdoom]

I was wincing while I watched Princess Bride with my daughter when she was home sick from school (seemed like the obvious moment to introduce that movie). Buttercup just never does anything. She stands there in the Fire Swamp looking scared while Westley's wrestling with the ROUS, with his sword laying next to her, which she never picks up (though she eventually helps him to reach it). She waits around for him to come and stop her wedding, intending to kill herself rather than, IDK, run away and try to find him? And I just thought, yeah, this is what role women had back then, so terrible and we didn't even see anything wrong with it. This would not fly today.

And that's not even touching, "Where I come from there are penalties when a woman lies." What the fuck.

[conuly]

Seriously, women have more agency in old ballads than in PB.

[greghousesgf]

I never really noticed misogyny in Princess Bride but I never much liked the fact that Calvin's father apparently bullies Calvin's mother into going on those damn camping trips. She doesn't like camping any more than Calvin does, why doesn't she have a say in where she goes on vacation?
A lot of the "obesity epidemic" is bullshit. these days you get the label obese slapped on you if you're TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS OR LESS OVERWEIGHT! And that's by very strict standards of what is considered an ideal weight.

[conuly]

Maybe they can't afford to take a more expensive vacation than camping. It's camping or nothing, and so she sucks it up once a year to make her husband happy, because sometimes we have to compromise a little.

[brigantine]

Yeah, I used to love it. The humor is clever and has fun teasing the old fairy tale traditions, but these days that "Where I come from there are penalties when a woman lies" bit always makes me think A) Really, you're gonna smack her, Westley? and B) What about when a man lies?

And it kinda sours things. Sigh.

But: You go, Minnesota! \o/

[conuly]

There are penalties for piracy too, but he's not too worried about those....

[stardreamer]

The article about the medieval dice is cool, but I wish whoever wrote it understood that "dice" is a plural form and the singular is "die". It's hard to tell from the article whether they found just one or more than one.

[conuly]

On the one hand, I completely agree with the point, especially in regards to this article.

On the other hand, I think this is an area where language is in flux and that singular dice will be standard within the next 50 years.

[lusentoj]

My wife also thinks it's pretty bad (she never saw it until she was an adult, and she grew up in the relatively gender-equal society of Sweden) but for me it's just another movie I saw when I was a kid *shrugs*. No matter how bad or "good" I lost all interest in like 99% of real-people films a long time ago lol.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

When I used to watch that movie with my daughter and with the kids I looked after, I regarded it as an opportunity to teach them to mock the Useless Princess archetype: Stuck-Up Buttercup, a perfect example of the Shakespearean term baggage (http://www.shakespeareswords.com/Play-Definitions.aspx?IdPlay=32), who has literally nothing going for her but her looks, and thus is passively carted around as the 'prize' of whoever has most recently taken her. Some prize! She's a blithering idiot, and as soon as her beauty fades she'll be excess baggage: Don't Be That Girl!

[conuly]

That's still no justification for how she's treated by, y'know, everybody. I can't help but feel that if she'd been given the opportunity to develop herself, she would not have been so useless. It's some kind of learned helplessness.

[spikethemuffin]

YES! To the misogyny of TPB. I mean, it's more invisible-woman stuff, but... ugh. I think only the acting chops of Robin Wright turned Buttercup into an even vaguely interesting character.

But... with the cult of beloved movies becoming musicals, though, I'd kind of love to see that movie on Broadway. They could rule-63 Inigo and Fezzig into a Thelma-and-Louise pair (which would actually make them more interesting, backstory-wise), and even include some characters of color...

[conuly]

If some great writer tackled PB from a feminist angle, I'd watch the hell out of it, whether it was a new movie or a musical or I don't even know.