Thursday, January 10, 2008

A Long Kiss Goodnight

I cannot believe I sat through this movie in this class. This movie was so incredibly hilarious to me! As lover of action movie, this one totally off the wall! I mean come on, the stunts were so incredibly impossible to achieve in real life! I can see why this movie killed Geena Davis’ career….Well let me start off my analysis by saying I do no think this movie was a buddy cop film in the same way our other films were. Sure, there were the elements of the genre that were sprinkled through but no one in the film was a cop. A small insignificant detail considering the professional relationship that both Charlene and Mitch has together. He was her P. I., helping her to recover facts about her life before she was discovered to have Focal Retrograde Amnesia. She treated him as an equal, forgetting any type of race issue that might separate them. I feel that the most influential impact that strained their relationship as buddies in any way was their differences in gender. Her character’s transformation from the timid and loving mother to the bad ass femme fatale Charlie Baltimore started to bring about a change in both her personality and her sexuality. She was brazen, flashing her breasts and trying to make the moves on her pal Mitch. Here we see the devaluation of both women and their image as a sexual figure in the media. It’s empowering to see women portrayed as strong beings, who will stand up for whatever they believe in and never back down. But in this movie’s case it was just plain ridiculous…..Every time she was captured or tortured she was either half naked or dressed in a white, flattering top, further pushing the stereotypes that women are nothing but sex objects in the media. This both disturbed me and angered me. She was also shown in various states of undress throughout the movie, which seems to be a staple in many cop film. I do not see that her nakedness showed the viewer any type of insecurity, like used in Lethal Weapon with Murtaugh in the tub or with Riggs in his trailer.

2 Comments:

Blogger Cat said...

I agree with you that Geena Davis's character is mostly portrayed as a sexual object in this movie, but I think that it was at least a little refreshing to see her fight back. In most action movies, even the ones we've seen in class, the women are usually only showed crying and screaming in the corner as something bad happens. It seems to me like they're always waiting to be rescued, for the men to do something. While I don't like that women are portrayed as pure sex objects, I have to ask myself: "is it better to be depicted as an incompetent coward or as a sex symbol?"

10:37 PM  
Blogger Vladigogo said...

Aren't the men sex objects as well with their shirts off? They too are objects of our vision as we stare at Mel Gibson's body. After all, he hangs in that water and never really shows any signs of damage from the electric shock. He still looks sexy.

9:00 AM  

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