I have to admit that I have not seen Mimic myself. The reason I thought
it was cool was this. A super-sexist jerk who is a staff writer at my
college newspaper (his last week masterpiece was about how women should not be
in the army because they are too weak to throw a grenade without killing
soldiers on their own side) recently wrote a review on the _Mimic_. In
which he told us how disgusted he was that Mira Sorvino's character was
to confront "that only potent male roach mutant" ( it obviously seemed to be
a part of his favorite idea of the world feminist conspiracy). I guess for
some people it's easier to identify with a cockroach than with a woman. This
must be the reason I thought Mimic was a good movie. That, and the fact that
it's been compared to Scream, which I loved. I guess I have to watch it to
see for myself, but now I'll probably wait for the video.
I wonder if anyone saw G.I.Jane. It's not a science fiction (I hope!),
but it's a good movie. Of course, I like violent action movies in general,
which a lot of people on the list don't. I just think that women have a
right to be as agressive as men, if they want to, and can enjoy "blowing
up a ship" just as much.
However, there were some funny things about the movie:
1. I don't think anyone else but Demi Moore would get away with this (nor
with all the other things she's done, from the naked pregnant picture in
Vanity Fair in 80's to the Striptease movie). If it was someone like
Geena Davis, or simply a single woman actress, there would be a lot of
screaming in the audience about man-hating and stuff like that. However, no
one would mess with Bruce Willis's wife. It seems that if you got the right
man, you can do whatever you want. Still, it's better than nothing.
2. The makers of the movie are bending over backwards to prevent
accusations of feminism (e.g. the strange behavior of the female
senator, and Moore's constant apologizing that she's "not trying to make
a statement"), while promoting its basic ideas.
3. I wonder if it's a common practice to perform military training in a
foreign country, which is not at war with US, including killing some native
soldiers just for the sake of training. Even if it's a country like
Lybia. Jeez, and then we wonder why we get bombs in public facilities.
Maybe that's also part of training for the other side's special service
schools.
4. The joke about the three hundred pound, superbutch female navy officer
"looking like a Russian" was extremely funny. Back in the USSR, we called
this "American Sense of Humor". Just kidding. :)
Respectfully,
Marina
On Fri, 29 Aug 1997, Heather MacLean wrote:
> Mimic is awful, awful, awful, and besides which, it's full of cockroaches (I
> love snakes, spiders are no big deal, but roaches... *shudder* Must be the
> housewife in me. ;). The trappings of "power" re: the female protagonist
> are all hyper-stereotypical role-reversals, up to the "No, take me!" bravado
> stance to save the poor little autistic boy from being annihilated... To
> top it all off, there's some really weird kinda nasty racist stuff going on
> in there, or at the very least, the same role-reversal/PC effort towards
> redemption that doesn't even vaguely mask the still anti-woman, anti-black
> paradigms underlying it all...
"Femininity is code for femaleness plus whatever society
happens to be selling at the time."
Naomi Wolf
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:37 PDT