August 15th, 2006
by
Ide Cyan
To continue a reply to a comment from Yonmei I’d begun –
I saw My Super Ex-Girlfriend last Sunday. I’d read the spoilers first, though, to prepare myself and decide whether it would be endurable. And it’s about as sexist as it sounds, i.e. halfheartedly so, since the movie’s trying to do too many things at once and it can’t pick a definite villain. Therefore, it’s occasionally sympathetic to Uma Thurman’s character. Those are the good bits.
Unfortunately the movie tries its damnedest to make sure that Luke Wilson’s character is irreproachable, and that her character’s revenge against his (which is glorious in its absurdity, mostly, since delving into this subject matter seriously would turn it into something intensely creepy and even more misogynistic because of the deadly outcome of the situation along the usual gender roles) is a product of her neurosis instead of his misbehaviour.
The use of oversensitivity to sexual harrassment in the workplace as a running joke is particularly odious and tiresome. In the mouth of the protagonist’s Black, female boss, it adds to the caricature of women in positions of power as unreasonable and unjust towards the poor hapless (White) males.
The first ending — where the guys are the source of all rational thought and emotional wisdom, berk — is trite. The second ending, a brief scene where the two main female characters (gasp!) talk to each other about something other than a man, would have been a good beginning, albeit to a completely different movie.
Jenny Johnson, aka G-Girl (Uma Thurman), ends up with Professor Bedlam, and Matt (Luke Wilson) ends up with Hannah. Thus the Leading Guy gets the girl he’d wanted, and the psycho ex-girlfriend is mollified by her arch-enemy’s devotion (once his plans to rob her of her powers have failed).
It’s Hannah’s offer to help Jenny in her superheroics, because they both have the same superpowers in the end, that marks the only instance of female solidarity in the movie. “I’ve never had any help before”, says Jenny. It’s a hopeful ending, and it’s a pity it had to be an ending. We could have been spared Jenny’s vilification of Hannah as a slut and a whore in all of her hysterical jealousy scenes, and the undignified catfight between them. (What else can you call it when it concludes, gratuitously, on a fashion-show catwalk?)
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Filed under TV & Film | Comments (2)
[...] Superwomen, not Fembots, are the subject of Ide Cyan’s post over at Feminist SF – The Blog!. In My Super Ex-Girlfriend [Caution! Spoilers in link.] she explores the movie of the same name from a feminist perspective. The use of oversensitivity to sexual harrassment in the workplace as a running joke is particularly odious and tiresome. In the mouth of the protagonist’s Black, female boss, it adds to the caricature of women in positions of power as unreasonable and unjust towards the poor hapless (White) males. [...]
[...] Superwomen, not Fembots, are the subject of Ide Cyan’s post over at Feminist SF – The Blog!. In My Super Ex-Girlfriend [Caution! Spoilers in link.] she explores the movie of the same name from a feminist perspective. The use of oversensitivity to sexual harrassment in the workplace as a running joke is particularly odious and tiresome. In the mouth of the protagonist’s Black, female boss, it adds to the caricature of women in positions of power as unreasonable and unjust towards the poor hapless (White) males. [...]