Is it just me, or a lot of everyone’s “favorite” Christmas movies totally sexist? Or at least patronizing to women?
I like Maureen O’Hara a lot better at the beginning of Miracle on 34th Street than at the end. She’s this totally cool, independent career woman who is actually managing the chaos of the Macy’s Day parade. By the end of it, she’s submitting like a good little Fifties woman to her Big Lawyer Man. You just know she’s going to quit her damn job and devote herself to taking care of that pretty new house full-time, don’t you? Bleah.
And A Christmas Story? I have to leave the room every time that scene comes on where the husband and sons won’t let their wife/mom sit down to eat one single bite of food, they keep asking her to get this and that and the other thing. Why that woman didn’t dump a big pot of (molten) gravy over her husband’s head, I do not know.
There’s also White Christmas, in which one sister connives to get another sister married and settled down, because of course it’s high time she stopped being single, not to mention the patronizing manner in which she is treated by that jerk Bing Crosby.
Or Christmas in Connecticut, in which a clever reporter is transformed into a happy housewife.
I suppose it’s unfair to even mention It’s a Wonderful Life, in which we are supposed to feel sorry for poor old Donna Reed because without Jimmy Stewart around to marry her, she becomes a mousy old maid librarian, and that’s just about the worst fate in the world, isn’t it?
No wonder my favorite Christmas movie is Brazil.
This just reminds me how many traditional Christmas faves I never saw or didn’t like well enough to watch all the way through when they were on tv. Miracle on 34th Street? Not sure I ever saw it, and if I did, I didn’t watch the whole thing. A Christmas Story? Everybody loves it, but I’ve only seen bits and pieces and never wanted to see more. White Christmas? Bleah. Christmas in CT? Never saw it, don’t know anything about it.
Wonderful Life? I’ve ranted about that one before.
I guess I mainly like movies that happen to be at Christmas (While You Were Sleeping, The Lion in Winter) instead of movies that are about a family having Christmas.
(Is this where I pretend I’ve seen Brazil and agree with Jette, or put Brazil in my netflix queue?)
This is where you do both, Pooks. ^_^
Me, I like “Home for the Holidays” with Holly Hunter, even though (I think) it’s more about Thanksgiving than Christmas. I have that brother. I have that sister (the crazy, bitter one). And it ends on such a sweet note of tentative hope.
Sei
Sei, my sister and I keep saying we should rent that one holiday and watch it together. Maybe this year, now that you’ve reminded me, we’ll actually do it. I just hope neither one of us accuses the other of being the crazy, bitter sister.
Pooks, please go put Brazil in your Netflix queue, or pester whatever they have for arthouse/revival theaters in the Metroplex to show it. Trust me. (Now I should write an entry about the movies I really do like to see at Christmas. Hm.)
Okay, it’s in the queue.
And I love Home for the Holidays, too. The main thing I remember about it is Robert Downey, Jr. I adore him. Okay, that goes in the queue, too.