Feminism, Pop-Culture | Posted by Robin S on 07/20/2009
The REAL Ugly Truth
we enforce stereotypes with a smile.
Has anyone else been seeing the commercials for the Ugly Truth movie and been worried about it?
Ever since I first saw an ad for it, I got the feeling that it was another movie that exploits the stereotypes of men and women in order to get some laughs. The poster for the movie shows the female lead, Katherine Heigl, holding up a heart by her head and the male lead, Gerard Butler, holding up a heart by his crotch. “Great!” I thought, “Something else that says that women only care about love and not sex, while men only care about sex and not love!”
Here’s the synopsis on the Rotten Tomatoes page for it:
The battle of the sexes heats up in Columbia Pictures’ comedy The Ugly Truth. Abby Richter (Katherine Heigl) is a romantically challenged morning show producer whose search for Mr. Perfect has left her hopelessly single. She’s in for a rude awakening when her bosses team her with Mike Chadway (Gerard Butler), a hardcore TV personality who promises to spill the ugly truth on what makes men and women tick.
This synopsis didn’t do much to quell my worrying. It seemed to just be confirming my thoughts about what kind of movie The Ugly Truth would be. Not wanting to let one site define the entire movie for me—and kind of hoping what I was reading wasn’t true—I looked up the IMDB synopsis for the movie:
A romantically challenged morning show producer (Heigl) is reluctantly embroiled in a series of outrageous tests by her chauvinistic correspondent (Butler) to prove his theories on relationships and help her find love. His clever ploys, however, lead to an unexpected result.
This synopsis is only a little bit better. The definite step-up from the last one here is how it at least identifies that there is a chauvinistic character. But does that help? Brushing the male lead off as being chauvinistic doesn’t make it suddenly okay for him to do chauvinistic things, especially if he’s giving out chauvinistic advice to someone and the other person listening instead of telling him that he’s crazy. And it’s obvious that the “unexpected result” is going to be that Heigl’s character falls in love with Butler’s character, isn’t it? The idea that this movie might entail a woman falling for a chauvinistic pig (she would probably end up seeing him as “cute” or “charming” in his ways and try to justify her liking him by saying that he’s just kind of naïve about how women truly are) makes me very unhappy.
But hold on, now. I don’t want to jump to conclusions. After all, my analysis of this movie is being based purely on assumption right now. The movie doesn’t actually come out until the 24th of this month, so it’s not like I or anyone else has actually seen it. However, I can tell that there are some things about this movie that I wouldn’t like even if I had seen it.
One, the first synopsis describes Heigl’s character as “a romantically challenged morning show producer whose search for Mr. Perfect has left her hopelessly single.” Hopelessly single? Honey, there ain’t nothing hopeless about being single. If your movie portrays being single like that, then I have some issues with how you think about women.
Two, Heigl’s character quite obviously is trying to change herself so that men will like her. This is idiotic; if men aren’t interested in you for who you truly are, then they’re not worth your time. If they don’t like you for who you are now, they’re not going to like you if you’re trying to be somebody else, and you are not going to like you if you’re trying to be somebody else. I think a commenter on the YouTube video I posted above summed it up pretty well: “girl’s no need 2 do all this shit.”
Three—and this is a big one—even if your movie is only showing the stereotype that men only care about sex as something ridiculous, there is a problem in thinking that this is something that should be laughed at. Men and women with opinions like that should be educated, not brushed off as amusing. If this is something we’re laughing at, then it shows that we’re excusing his behavior as just being kind of silly, which shows that we at least agree with him a little bit. If we disagreed with him completely, we wouldn’t laugh; we’d sit there in disgust, hoping somebody in the movie actually succeeds in getting him to see how wrong his views are instead of just expressing their dislike for him.
But again, I don’t want to completely criticize this movie without seeing it. Hopefully the real truth that The Ugly Truth shows is not that its writers (who are actually female) are inherently sexist.
What do you guys think? Am I completely off base? Is this movie a problem, or should I not be worrying about it at all?
(8 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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Joshua @ at 11:41 am, July 20th, 2009
Well said! I feel the same way about a lot of the bro comedies that come out, like The Hangover and whatever. People say you can’t judge by the adverts, but you can! You totally can!
Sometimes, it’s just obvious that what you’d see if you went into the theater is sexist pablum. And I think it’s ok to decide you don’t want to see that crap and save your $11 for something that doesn’t insult your intelligence, gender, subculture, whatever.
Paul S @ at 12:04 pm, July 20th, 2009
You’re not off base at all. I too was annoyed by the previews for this movie, especially the hearts-over-the-body-parts poster.
Chances are that by the end of the movie, the two fall in love and the guy realizes the error of his ways, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that the two characters are portrayed as stereotypes anyway. Still, I’m just assuming the plot of the movie, and you know what they say what happens when you assume…
Amanda @ at 1:56 pm, July 20th, 2009
Ha! Somebody ripped off an old t-shirt design and turned it into a movie poster and possibly an entire movie! That’s awesome!
Check out this comic from “The Boiling Point” by the awesome Mikhaela Reid:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3528/3722913405_aab66d351a_o.gif
Karlyn @ at 2:35 pm, July 20th, 2009
I work in a movie theatre and I will be screening the movie on Wednesday to check for scratches on the film and such,
I will let you know what I think of it..
I have been staring at a giant banner copy of the poster for months now and it annoys me every time I see it.
Alex Catgirl @ at 4:46 pm, July 20th, 2009
His clever ploys, however, lead to an unexpected result.
Yes those are called “Hate Fucks”, and usually end with the girl hating herself for sleeping with someone she can’t stand. I’m sure that’s not how it will be in the movie tho.
Laura @ at 7:34 pm, July 20th, 2009
I have some major problems with this movie. You covered a lot of them and made your argument very well. I hate that people actually think that this is how women and men behave. It’s offensive to both women AND men. And that poster. Completely ridiculous. Apparently, women overthink and love with their heads and men can only think with their genitals. I cannot see how the movie itself would redeem itself after these trailers…
I write more about this at my blog…here’s the link: http://youngfeministadventures.blogspot.com/2009/07/truth-about-ugly-truth.html
RebJ @ at 8:07 pm, July 20th, 2009
I love the caption on the picture
Another movie to remind us that all men are slobs and all women are prisses….. I imagine it will be pathetically predictable junk for the mind.
SarahMC @ at 10:11 pm, July 20th, 2009
This movie looks like such a macho male fantasy. The all-knowing man schools the insecure, desperate woman on gender relations (we are two different species, dontchaknow), and she eventually falls for him and beds him despite his chauvinism.
Dana @ at 10:13 pm, July 20th, 2009
I thought the same thing! Saw the commercial over a month ago; have been angry about it ever since. You’re right that we’d be wrong to indict without having seen the thing, but so far, I’m thinking I’d rather refuse to see it on the grounds of that commercial than chip in my $11 to fund the franchise.
Robin S. @ at 4:12 am, July 21st, 2009
@Laura: Thank you!! I’ll definitely be reading that blog post.
Sophia @ at 5:20 am, July 21st, 2009
I’ve been a bit concerned about the previews for this film as well. Usually rom-coms (or at least their previews) aren’t so blatantly and disgustingly stereotypical. Either the preview exaggerated the stereotypical-ness or this movie is going to be more than eye bleedingly sexist and terrible.
acetyleen @ at 3:24 am, July 22nd, 2009
I just finished reading “The Myth Of Mars And Venus” by Deborah Cameron – and it’s just so sad to me that this book, challenging the Mars and Venus gender stereotypes, will be completely lost in the tide of relationship self-help books and movies like these, ones that purport to “TELL THE TRUTH”. And that people are so trusting of popular science and media!!
Sarah @ at 4:23 pm, July 22nd, 2009
I’m going to give this movie the benefit of the doubt before viewing it and predict that the “unexpected ending” is that the two main characters not only fall in love, but also (in no particular order):
-Katherine Heigl’s character realizes all Butler’s advice was a joke and discards/forgets it and continues her life as a successful producer.
-Gerard Butler’s character realizes that not all women have to act/look/walk/talk/etc. a certain way in order to be good enough for him and falls in love with Heigl for who she really is (and vice versa, of course).
-They live happily ever after and all that bullshit…
Lindsey Ebesugawa @ at 4:27 pm, April 13th, 2011
band of brothers has been around for 8 seasons? Has Vince got around to being famous yet cause if not I nominate its renamed to “Friends”… Wait.