You'll probably find this a bit hard to believe, but Monica Corcoran of the Los Angeles Times has proposed that women don't like The Dark Knight because...it's too long for them to watch without having to get up and pee. Here's a sample quote from "Why Women Can't Handle The Dark Knight":
"Clearly, the director of "The Dark Knight" and the auteurs behind other interminable fan boy action movies such as "Iron Man" (126 minutes) don't know that a woman's bladder is about the size of a salted cocktail peanut. Men have bladders that are walnut-sized. And those very gals, after silently praying that the Joker will die or Batman will retire or everyone will just perish en masse and the movie will end, tend to be seated in the centers of theater rows."
I have a had time even taking this argument to pieces. It's so stupid, and has already been so savaged, that it seems pointless. I'll do it anyway, but my heart's not in it.
1. Women can't handle The Dark Knight? I'm sorry, I didn't realize that. I must have been mistaken.
2. Monica asks: "Ever drink a gallon of Diet Coke and sit for two hours with your legs crossed? Oh and then -- just when it seems like Gotham is safe and credits will roll -- suffer through another 32 minutes of clenching your nether region muscles?" A comment on her site asks: "Why don't you just NOT drink a gallon of diet coke?" Well Monica, I'm gonna go with Kelly on this one: that sounds like a personal problem to me.
3. Monica describes Iron Man as an interminable fan boy action movie (126 minutes). Look Monica, first of all, the fanboys don't like Iron Man - he was a big jerk and mean to Cap. Didn't you read Civil War? Secondly, if you found Iron Man interminable, it wasn't because it was 126 minutes. That's about 10 minutes longer than the average move. If that ten minutes is gonna kill you, you'll have to avoid roughly 40% of all movies.
4. Monica seems to think the length of a movie is directly proportional to how guy-centric it is. Oops. Oops. 238 minute-long Quadruple Oops.
Look, I'm a guy, and I like many stereotypically guy movies. I also like many stereotypically girl movies, and I've tried to use this blog as a place to talk about the now century long handicapping of female stars, female audiences, and above all female creators.
When something like this is published, it embarrasses not only its author, but all of us who would like sexist and regressive thinking to go out the window. In a perfect universe, Monica Corcoran would get fired. But all I've got is this blog, so I make it clear that she's just an idiot. It's the best I can do.
11 comments:
Wait, did she just call Jon Favreau an auteur?
Lol
my wife had plenty of cherry coke during the Dark Knight, and she didn't once complain about the length of the film.
so that lady is off her rocker.
oh and good call on the civil war reference, nice to see someone else read some comics.
Hi Graham! I'm a friend of Sarah's. She pointed your blog out to me, and I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy what you've written. Particularly this post - I also wrote a reaction to Monica Corcoran, but I was much less ... eloquent. Ha.
heck, i wish it was longer
I'm sure you're aware of this, but I feel like I should try to point out that ol' Monica's just trying to be funny here. Failing, perhaps. But she's not trying to make any serious points about the film's quality, or even its chances of appealing to the fairer sex.
It's funny, though -- I had a similar experience when I went to see TDK. It didn't seem fair -- all I drank was a small Diet Coke (which I needed, as I was feeling tired and thirsty when I walked into the theater), but after an hour and a half I needed to go. Couldn't bring myself to leave, though -- the tension never really lets up in that film, and besides, I'm such a film dork that I can almost never bring myself to leave in the middle of a movie (I once "held it" for the last two hours of The Fellowship of the Ring).
And I'm male. Go figure.
Yeah, I can tell she's trying to be funny.
She's just not.
Make a bizarre statement on the single most talked about film in recent history = Huge amount of hits. She is probably raking in the site hits, and drinking a super big gulp and laughing at us all.
My only question is why? does anyone actually purchase food or beverages at the theatre. Noticed the cost of a small popcorn at Dark Knight was now over the $5.00 canadian. Thats half the cost of the show.... I think I'll skip the popcorn twice and see a third film.
Dark Knight was good.... not great!
The brutal editing in the film is enough to lessen my opinion of the film.
She may have been joking, but it's still annoying. Would she have made the same joke if the Sex and the City movie was 2.5 hours long?
Actually, she did complain that Sex and the City was 2.5 hours long...but she complained that that was made by a man.
I left my seat for a potty break, thanks to my 32 ounce bladder-buster, and so missed a few minutes of redundant mayhem and blather in Gotham. The movie was still too long, even on an empty bladder.
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