Saw a movie tonight

[Travler]

I just saw a movie called One Night With The King and I have to say the movie was much better than expected.

I went to see it with my wife and she was really excited about the movie but I had heard little about and did no research on it. When we got to the theater my friend Tim said it was a "Chick Flick" and asked if the coffee I was drinking was regular or decaff. I said regular and he said "Good, Good, then you won't fall asleep."

So I was thinking that I was about to suffer through a 2 hour movie that had little appeal for a man to watch. I was quite surprised by the movie. Even though it is very emotional at times there is enough plot and action for men to be able to enjoy the film.

Women will totally dig this film and it's an awesome date movie that will score big brownie points with the ladies.

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

I dont know why but these 2 sentences annoy me. I think its a combination of the meaningless gender stereotyping and the phrase "totally dig".

Gender stereotyping isnt "meaningless", because it still applies to the majority of people. For example there are "established" rules about what males prefer in literature and what females prefer and it seems like the same would apply to movies.

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Ramihyn

Gender stereotyping isnt "meaningless", because it still applies to the majority of people. There are "established" rules about what males prefer in literature and what females prefer.

I'm not so sure about this. Sure, a heavy majority of fans of books about war might be males, but that doesn't mean that these fans constitute the majority of males. Ditto romantic fiction for women. That's why these "rules" (established or otherwise, whatever that means) have a very limited predictive power.

The only rule that I'd consider in this area is that most people dislike most things (which is why these stereotypes are of limited use). Even the most popular movies or books generally only have a minority following (there are exceptions but they aren't that common).

[Snurx]

The worst thing about this forum is that I agree too often with the communists

Stereotyping can work beacaues people put themselfs into those positions as to fit in, however. But generalization is the root of much evil, so doing it is pretty shit

[All Systems Go]

As an example of the fallibility of stereotyping I thought this film would be about Jesus.*






















*Or possibly Elvis.

[Snurx]

http://www.8x.com/volunteers.htm

Preaching again Traveler?

[Ramihyn]

Originally Posted by Dante Hicks

I'm not so sure about this. Sure, a heavy majority of fans of books about war might be males, but that doesn't mean that these fans constitute the majority of males. Ditto romantic fiction for women.

It doesnt seem to be (mostly) about the topic, but about how you write about it. Some years ago there was a discussion with science fiction writers why (their) sci-fi generally has only few female readers. They just did a research which showed around 85-87% of their readers where male.

They said it is basically very simple - females prefer to read about people and males want to read about "things". Female readers want to hear stories about the crew and their relationships while males want to read about spaceships, weapons, adventures or combats. Because of their agreement on this "rule" and due to their reputation, i think there might be something true about it

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by Ramihyn

Female readers want to hear stories about the crew and their relationships while males want to read about spaceships, weapons, adventures or combats. Because of their agreement on this "rule" and due to their reputation, i think there might be something true about it

Yeah, and a rule like this would be of use how exactly? Just as I said earlier, maybe men do like different kinds of stories to women. If I read a book that I then want to recommend to a girl then I'm not going to say "Hey, you should like this; it's about people!".

Maybe men do like stories about "adventures" but the vast majority of books about adventures are still despised by the vast majority of men. So "rules" like this aren't of much use, except in an exclusionary manner (and even then, not immensely - if 15% of sci-fans are women then there's no easy way of telling which women will form that group).

[Travler]

Originally Posted by Snurx

http://www.8x.com/volunteers.htm

Preaching again Traveler?

Heh. I just added the link for reference. I did a yahoo search for the film after I got home. I am not a preacher just a regular believer.

About the stereotypes, Women seem to view things from an emotional standpoint or how the characters feel while men seem to view the physcial aspects and what is actually happening with the characters.

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Toccata & Fugue

I have no particular problem with stereotyping per se, obviously we have to make soem asumptions. However its just this tedious unthinking lol guys like violence chicks "dig" emotion shite.

When it comes to mainstream stuff, this is generally true though. It's like in pop music; guys often like loud cock-rock stuff, whereas girls maybe prefer slow ballads and cheese. Music that is actually good can be enjoyed by both sexes though; I doubt theres any real gender disparity when it comes to Mozart fans for instance. In pop-fiction, guys generally like stuff that is full of action and maybe based around sex and violence, whereas girls often go for lovestories and 'real people' crap. Again though, great literature generally doesnt divide along gender lines like this.The best movies probably arent aimed at either gender, but a lot of formulaic hollywood produce definitely seems to be gender targetted (guns and explosions!!!!! vs love stories).

Originally Posted by Travler

About the stereotypes, Women seem to view things from an emotional standpoint or how the characters feel while men seem to view the physcial aspects and what is actually happening with the characters.

Again, this is probably only true for pop stuff. Take literature for example; stereotypical 'male' books like Tom Clancy may well based around action whereas chick-lit is based around emotions, but this sort of classification starts to break down when you when you look at novels by (eg) Hesse or Doestoyvsky which centre almost entirely around psychology and 'feelings' at the expense of action.

Is anyone seriously going to argue that Casablanca is a girly film? American Beauty?

[Nodrog]

Originally Posted by Ramihyn

It doesnt seem to be (mostly) about the topic, but about how you write about it. Some years ago there was a discussion with science fiction writers why (their) sci-fi generally has only few female readers. They just did a research which showed around 85-87% of their readers where male.

They said it is basically very simple - females prefer to read about people and males want to read about "things". Female readers want to hear stories about the crew and their relationships while males want to read about spaceships, weapons, adventures or combats. Because of their agreement on this "rule" and due to their reputation, i think there might be something true about it

How many girls have actually read good sci-fi though, and how many just associate it with the horrid "we're in the future with laser guns!!" stuff? For that matter, how many _guys_ have done the same? The stereotype of sci-fi being both male and geeky is self-perpetuating; it turns people off with the result that not many girls or non-nerds bother to scratch below the Klingon guarded surface. But I doubt there's any intrinsic reason why something like Firefly/Serenity or a Heinlein novel is more 'male' than 'female'; sci-fi that is primarilly about cool technology is mostly shit anyway (imo etc).

edit: Having sais that, I would say that a problem with a fair bit of sci-fi that perhaps does make it more male-orientated is a general failure to write strong female characters that arent either helpless maidens or male fantasy objects.