Set It Up: A Rom-Com Where Women Talk About Something Other Than Men (Women & Men in the Movies No. 2)

Posted on September 19, 2018October 19, 2018 by admin

This week I’ll look at how women characters are portrayed and how they interact in 2018 Netflix rom-com Set It Up. (Find out more about the tests mentioned below in Women, Men, and Movies or just read on.) The Story Think Devil Wears Prada crossed with Parent Trap. In Set It Up, two assistants, Harper and Charlie, work long hours for horrendous bosses. When Harper orders a midnight second dinner for her boss but has no cash to pay for it she meets Charlie. Charlie has cash, so he swoo...

Extant, Transcendence, and Who’s Talking To Whom

Posted on August 26, 2014 by admin

The concept of recent sci-fi movie Transcendence– what if a human’s brain becomes an A.I.? – fascinated me, and I enjoyed the film. What bothers me is that despite one of the two main characters being a woman, Dr. Evelyn Caster, I can’t remember, in the entire movie, any woman speaking one-on-one with any other woman. About anything. I understand men outnumber women in the hard sciences, but Evelyn has not a single woman friend to support her in a crisis? I also understand that writers can’...

The Bionic Woman, Buffy, and the Man of Steel

Posted on July 24, 2013 by admin

I recently saw Man of Steel. Superman was a bit too dark for me, and the special effects struck me as overkill. All the same, retellings and new approaches to familiar tales fascinate me. I'm intrigued by questions such as why the storyteller chose to modify the origin story, or the mentor character's advice, or the overall theme. Was it to fill empty spaces? To fit with modern beliefs? Because the storyteller always believed the "new" backstory existed but wa...