Love of the Common Zan

“It looks like a 9, but it’s got a line so maybe it’s a 6?”
“No, I put the line on top of the 9.”
“And you didn’t put any line on the 6?”
“No, I put a line at the BOTTOM of the 6.”
A beat, then:
“You do realize why this is problematic, don’t you?”

danielleh:

zzzan:

danielleh:

The entire presidency of (either) George Bush and Alexander Payne’s veiled misogyny have completely one-two punched my capacity to give any shits about rich white guys.

That said, if the entire movie had been about Beau Bridges’ character I would have stayed awake.

(Before I jump into this, you should know that I was deeply affected by this movie. I wouldn’t give it a Best Picture Oscar or anything, but I thought it contained an emotional intensity that transcended the screen in a way I haven’t seen in a film in a long time. I was also on my period when I saw it. All of which probably guides my argument below…)

This is fascinating to me; I almost feel like I was watching a different film to you and other people I’ve talked to about this. Specifically, I’ve had a few conversations about how this movie depicts women, and even though I understand the argument that placing a voiceless female character at the center of a family’s anger could leave some with lingering thoughts of veiled misogyny, I still believe that the wife is not the villain in this movie; the marriage is. My numbers 1, 2, and 3 arguments for this would be the characters played by Judy Greer (the realtor’s wife), Shailene Woodley (daughter 1), and Amara Miller (daughter 2): strong female characters who can see past bullshit and act without dictation from the men in their lives. Even the wife, though we never heard her voice, had acted independently, choosing to effectively call off her marriage before it was dead in the water, so to speak.

As for the wealth, I thought it was set dressing in order to show pretty houses and pools and beaches and hotel rooms (films about people with less money usually do the same thing in reverse, and usually end up offending me more; see Gummo); the emotion of loss (to me) had nothing to do with their wealth or privilege. 

But then to your point, if rich white men are the issue here, isn’t Beau Bridges’ character more offensive than George Clooney’s? The rich white man who is content in using his family fortune to maintain a slumming island lifestyle? Ugh. If anyone in the movie offended me, it was him. In fact, I thought this movie did a good job of mocking rich white men. George Clooney angrily running up the street in flip-flops, Matthew Lillard’s smug face on the real estate sign, the menfolk’s general disregard for the sanctity of the land they ended up with by the accident of their white grandfather marrying a Hawaiian princess. If anything, I came away from the movie judging the men harshly, not the women.

Then again, as I mentioned before, I wept like I was emotionally unstable when I saw this, so my emotions might be guiding this defense… I’m open to further discussion! Convince me!

While it’s not a prerequisite for movie watching, I usually require two things: That it offer some kind of emotional connection, or that it be entertaining.

The Descendants was neither.

I can’t remove class or race from anything I do in this country, so please understand if my viewing experience is different from yours for very personal and probably-not-at-all-related to the movie reasons. But I’ve been fed the “Rich People: They’re Just Like Us!” line of reasoning so many times in movies, and it’s just not ever plausible. I know I’m supposed to applaud Clooney’s character for making the decision to actually have a job! instead of living off of his family’s wealth…but his actual job is as a somewhat privileged lawyer living in one of the most expensive places in America. The emotional manipulation they were trying to force upon me was a wasted effort. If my husband was in a coma, he wouldn’t be in a private room, and I probably wouldn’t be able to keep him alive long enough for this story to play out. If he was cheating on me and my closest friends knew about it but didn’t tell me, I sincerely doubt I’d be able to find a way to still be friendly with them, let alone invite them over for dinner. If my teenage child was acting out because as parents we were so self-involved that we categorically fucked up her ability to navigate her own life, I wouldn’t be able to send her to a prep school but would definitely have to deal with her bullshit teenage attitude in my face every day. I would probably spend money on a psychologist for my youngest child, who, while funny, seems to be on her way to becoming a sociopath. Every action, every single thing that Clooney character said or did in the movie was informed by his class status. Maybe I wasn’t able to suspend disbelief long enough to get into the story?

I thought Judy Greer’s character was actually sort of pathetic and anemic. I hate to put it in these words, but I’m struggling to define it in any other way…That whole crying and forgiving the woman who fucked your husband scene is straight-up, Elizabethan era white lady territory. None of the women in this movie had agency - they weren’t allowed to be angry (sent away to school, no scenes involving Greer emotionally responding to her husband, Alzheimer’s, actually in a coma and unable to speak), their lives revolved around men, and spent the rest of the time in tears. The misogyny I mentioned was more in line with ALL of Payne’s movies, where women are the consistently problematic center? But especially this one. All of the women in The Descendants were presented as these fucked up creatures with no hope of transcending.

The Beau Bridges character was totally flawed, I agree, but the most believable and interesting. I 100% believe that someone who inherited familial wealth would float around aimlessly, sort of not present in the world, maybe a little sad, maybe spending a bit too much time at the local bar. I’m fascinated by people who can get through life without actually engaging with it, you know? Like, HOW DO YOU LIVE THAT WAY? That, to me, is much more interesting than the earnest, just trying to do the right thing Clooney character, who takes no ownership in how destructive a force he is within his own family dynamic.

I should probably stop seeing movies like this. I’m just hard-pressed to find anything about this film that actually made me care about any of the characters in it.

I mentioned separately in an email to Danielle that I’m probably defensive about this film because I feel guilty for being emotionally moved by it, especially considering the criticisms it’s received from people I really respect. All of her points above make total sense to me, and make me want to rethink my viewing of the film (especially Judy Greer’s character, though I think women like her really do exist, the ones who are angry but still want to be kind, that sort of choked up hate-love-respect-friendship that women unfortunately have for each other sometimes, even when we’re forced into those emotional relationships by the actions of men).

I’ll add that I certainly didn’t applaud Clooney’s character for having a job (I didn’t buy at ANY point that his life was “hard,” I thought his discomfort came from the fact that his world no longer revolved around his idea of what his life was - he was no longer in control of the narrative), and I definitely wasn’t trying to make the rich people are just like us argument: I was moved by the base emotional reaction to loss, the crying and shouting and numbness (as I said in what I wrote - not because I’ve experienced it, but because I wonder how I would experience it, and because I fear experiencing it so intensely), not necessarily how it was handled in their reality (the daughter being angry that he told her that her mother was going to die while she was in the pool).

But I can see how their ability to afford a private room, throw a banquet to announce that she’s dying, jet off to Kauai to confront her lover - this privilege does guide the actions of the characters in the film, which in turn makes their wealth more than just set dressing. So I suppose I was wrong about that.

So, yeah, I do feel guilty for being moved by it. I was giving it too much free range with my emotion, a free pass because I cried a lot. I need to go sit with this for a while. Danielle: thanks for your perspective. 

(Let’s write this Beau Bridges film? Hmm? Maybe Hollywood would even pay us to go to Hawaii for research? I’d take their money. And spend it subversively.)

danielleh:

The entire presidency of (either) George Bush and Alexander Payne’s veiled misogyny have completely one-two punched my capacity to give any shits about rich white guys.

That said, if the entire movie had been about Beau Bridges’ character I would have stayed awake.

(Before I jump into this, you should know that I was deeply affected by this movie. I wouldn’t give it a Best Picture Oscar or anything, but I thought it contained an emotional intensity that transcended the screen in a way I haven’t seen in a film in a long time. I was also on my period when I saw it. All of which probably guides my argument below…)

This is fascinating to me; I almost feel like I was watching a different film to you and other people I’ve talked to about this. Specifically, I’ve had a few conversations about how this movie depicts women, and even though I understand the argument that placing a voiceless female character at the center of a family’s anger could leave some with lingering thoughts of veiled misogyny, I still believe that the wife is not the villain in this movie; the marriage is. My numbers 1, 2, and 3 arguments for this would be the characters played by Judy Greer (the realtor’s wife), Shailene Woodley (daughter 1), and Amara Miller (daughter 2): strong female characters who can see past bullshit and act without dictation from the men in their lives. Even the wife, though we never heard her voice, had acted independently, choosing to effectively call off her marriage before it was dead in the water, so to speak.

As for the wealth, I thought it was set dressing in order to show pretty houses and pools and beaches and hotel rooms (films about people with less money usually do the same thing in reverse, and usually end up offending me more; see Gummo); the emotion of loss (to me) had nothing to do with their wealth or privilege. 

But then to your point, if rich white men are the issue here, isn’t Beau Bridges’ character more offensive than George Clooney’s? The rich white man who is content in using his family fortune to maintain a slumming island lifestyle? Ugh. If anyone in the movie offended me, it was him. In fact, I thought this movie did a good job of mocking rich white men. George Clooney angrily running up the street in flip-flops, Matthew Lillard’s smug face on the real estate sign, the menfolk’s general disregard for the sanctity of the land they ended up with by the accident of their white grandfather marrying a Hawaiian princess. If anything, I came away from the movie judging the men harshly, not the women.

Then again, as I mentioned before, I wept like I was emotionally unstable when I saw this, so my emotions might be guiding this defense… I’m open to further discussion! Convince me!