Have you even watched the movie? Every single concrete point you bring up is wrong!
1) They don't at any point portray the treatment of "the office loser" in a positive way.
2) Gibson's character was not forced to dress as a woman; he chose to do it himself, in the privacy of his own home.
3) Hunt's character's qualifications for the job and spelled out, and they are clearly more than adequate for the job she has been contracted to do.
4) Hunt is never rude to Gibson, she always behaves professionally toward, except later on when they begin dating. Sure, she thinks rude thoughts about him, but how is she to know that he can hear them?
5) Gibson's sexual prowess is unaffected. What happens is that, since he can hear his partner's thoughts, he gets a much more accurate measure of how he is doing, and finds that his actual performance is less than what he had thought it was. But, instead of whining or denying, he works at it to get better, which is a rare and very good character trait.
6) About the patronizing and gay advice... it depends on who he is giving it to. Some people will respond positively to that sort of thing and others will not. Since Gibson's character can hear their thoughts he can tell who to do that with.
7) Do the women in the movie want Gibson's character to be sexually attracted to human males? No, they don't, therefore they don't want him to be gay. Words have meaning. The word you are probably looking for is effeminate, which is still a stretch.
8) The second class status thing... oh, alright, I'll give you that one. Not because I think he is "accepting second class status", but because he is being saddled with a daughter who is an obnoxious little twit. I always wonder why Hollywood teenagers are so insufferable, but that is a topic for another time.
9) Hunt's character loosing her job is a disaster, both for her and for Gibson's character. If you had paid attention during the movie you would have noticed that every good idea Gibson had was actually Hunt's, and he stole them thanks to his ability to hear her thoughts. At the beginning of the movie it is established that Gibson is good and advertising to certain audience's, but is no good at targeting the kind of audience that Hunt was hired to advertise for. Gibson realizes this and, in a panic, starts stealing Hunt's ideas as soon as he hears her thinking them. This offers him a temporary reprieve from the possibility of getting fired, but it also means that he is getting deeper and deeper into a job he in woefully unqualified for, and once Hunt leaves he'll have no ideas to put forward. It is also bad because Gibson realizes that he has majorly screwed over a person who had done nothing to him personally, and he feels guilty about it. This is what we, the non-sociopathic segment of the general population, call "being a decent person".
10) Yes, Gibson grovels, but, guess what? Everything is his fault! He tells her he undermined her at every step, which he did, and that all his ideas were actually hers, which they were, and that he can't do her job, which he can't. All those things were clearly and painstakingly established during the movie.
11) How is Hunt selfish? Even though Gibson one-ups her at every turn, instead of being jealous or resentful, as many of us would be, she congratulates him, offers to help him if he needs it, and later on admits that he is much better than she is and therefore deserves the job (none of which is true, but she doesn't know that).
12) Yes, she does fire him. Who but the most dysfunctional and emotionally maladjusted freak would take such enormous betrayal without feeling anger? All things considered, her equanimity is rather extraordinary.
13) About his job loss, yeah, I'll give you that one too. They do treat it as not too important, which of course it is. However, it is very much deserved. By continuously lying about his abilities and accomplishments, he got a much better qualified co-worker fired and screwed his company out of a valuable asset. The fact that he realizes this and wants to make amends speaks loudly in his favor.
14) "Feminist propaganda tripe and highly mysandrist."? Yes, unquestionably. The movie you imagine having seen is certainly this, however, it is not the movie that actually aired.
Now, this movie isn't any sort of paragon of gender equality or progressive rights, nor does it have the most carefully crafted script, but this sort of commentary is simply ridiculous. I don't where this criticism comes from, but I can say that it does not come form anything shown on the screen.
More than was necessary, I guess, but sometimes a good rant really hits the spot!
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Rie4973
13 years ago
Hats off to you Valhar, you completely get it. There are lots of men who hate to see women succeed at anything and will find things wrong with it when they do, so we have to work twice as hard to prove ourselves. I don't care about exceeding beyond what a man can do (although I'd smile if I did), I just want to be treated as an equal when I do my equal share. The movie is about a chauvinistic man realizing that women aren't just parking spots for his penis.
I thought it's funny when he starts acting gay, because gay men are the nicest and most understanding guys around, therefore women are naturally attracted to them, because it's all we want- a guy who will listen to our inane babble, worries, quirks, and understand- not blame us for being on our periods or whatever.
"The unopened package was a waterproof, solar-powered, satelite phone"- Robert Zemeckis, Cast Away
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