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MaxE
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12 Mar 2024, 5:16 am

Like the subject says. Poor Things seems to be making a feminist statement, but the writers and director are all male. I am surprised the film hasn't caught more shade from feminists.


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DuckHairback
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12 Mar 2024, 2:11 pm

Maybe, like me, the feminists found it intelligent, funny and thought-provoking?


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MaxE
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12 Mar 2024, 5:17 pm

To me it seemed very validating for someone who fancies himself a male feminist. Not the sort of hard core feminism one finds on https://reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes. So I decided to go look there and found:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/19cyw7v/the_movie_poor_things_is_a_male_fantasy/

This is how I would have expected most women to react, but what would I know?


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MaxE
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Suicidal_Vampire
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26 Mar 2024, 4:25 pm

Sorry for being late for the party, but I totally agree with you. Here's my Letterbox review for the film that addresses some of my issues with it:
Socially acceptable ableism and pedophilia.
Subverts the "Born Sexy Yesterday" trope just to play it straight.
How many fking shots of Emma Stone's body do you need? The message of feminism is clear; you can only play a strong, self-actualized woman if you strip down to your socks.
How can no one see this for the Oscar bait it is? Non-disabled actors playing disabled characters for cheap laughs, what is this, Forest Gump?
I don't have a problem with sex scenes, though they bore me, I can understand they're important thematically. Watched Oppenheimer after this and didn't care when one jumped out at us in a movie about literal nuclear warfare. But this movie... Sometimes things are excessive on purpose.
"That's the point!" they cry. But that doesn't make something above critique.
The whole movie is just an excuse to play dress up and walk through honestly beautiful sets under the flimsy guise it follows the plot. Make an art exhibit, not a movie if you want to be offensive and then not explain yourself.


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Honey69
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27 Mar 2024, 9:01 pm

I really have no idea what anyone is talking about. Maybe I ought to watch this one?


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DuckHairback
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10 Apr 2024, 11:00 am

Suicidal_Vampire wrote:
Non-disabled actors playing disabled characters for cheap laughs, what is this, Forest Gump?


Bella Baxter isn't disabled. She's a child. What movie did you watch?

I've seen it a couple of times now, and I'm okay with it. I think it's interesting that Bella isn't so much emancipated from a patriarchal society as much as she's emancipated from the hang-ups that come with growing up. For her, sex is a simple matter of physical sensation. Sexual experiences can't hurt her, emotionally or psychologically at least, because she doesn't have the associations with it that we develop as we grow up. I think that's an idea that's interesting enough to warrant exploration.


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10 Apr 2024, 2:17 pm

DuckHairback wrote:
Suicidal_Vampire wrote:
Non-disabled actors playing disabled characters for cheap laughs, what is this, Forest Gump?


Bella Baxter isn't disabled. She's a child. What movie did you watch?

I've seen it a couple of times now, and I'm okay with it. I think it's interesting that Bella isn't so much emancipated from a patriarchal society as much as she's emancipated from the hang-ups that come with growing up. For her, sex is a simple matter of physical sensation. Sexual experiences can't hurt her, emotionally or psychologically at least, because she doesn't have the associations with it that we develop as we grow up. I think that's an idea that's interesting enough to warrant exploration.

She's coded as mentally disabled and a character in the movie calls her a ret*d. Willem Dafoe plays a physically disabled character. Sure, part of it's just sci-fi silliness, but his various deformities are still played for laughs and shock value. It's a caricature either way and it's not just me who thinks this.
However, I agree with you that this topic is an interesting subject for exploration, my problem is the execution (and that the director of this movie on very sexualized feminism is a man). Personally, I realize that you can see past the good chunk of this movie being a child in a woman's body having sex with adults, but I just can't.



lostonearth35
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10 Apr 2024, 2:27 pm

You should avoid anything on Reddit that is gender-based like TwoXChromosomes, those subreddits are more toxic than a field of death cap mushrooms. :skull:

Of course, there have been plenty of toxic subreddits full of woman-hating incels that have (mostly) been banned.