dani ([info]_allecto_) wrote,
@ 2006-02-15 23:22:00
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This is a feminist rant about The Motorcycle Diaries. If you liked this movie don’t click on the cut and be offended.

I knew I would hate this movie as soon as the activist/socialists here started raving on about it. I put it off until I could watch it with [info]dis_senter so I had someone who I could share the hatred with.

I didn’t realise that I would hate it this much!

The messages I got from this movie:

Women are diamonds that must be stolen from their fathers. It is ok to steal these diamonds because they consent to being stolen.

A man’s dream is to explore a continent; his woman’s dream is to be given an American bathing suit.

It is awful that a man’s land is stolen from him. It is awful that he must therefore compete with other men in order to work in a dangerous mine just to feed his family. However, a woman enjoys being forced to sell her body to men in order to eat. Conclusion: for men, working in a dangerous and soul-destroying job is a sacrifice; for women, a pleasure.

Even if a woman has the appropriate dream of wanting a bathing suit, a man’s dream of wanting a fuck from a prostitute is far more valid.

A man who ‘wins’ a fuck from a prostitute deserves honor and glory.

Women who have power are evil tyrants who force men to wear gloves when they don’t want to. These women are barbarous and enforce their unbending rules by denying men food. Men deserve to be given food regardless of whether or not they are adhering to the rules set down by their hosts (especially if these hosts don’t have penises).

Che Guevara at 23 was a really, really, really bad writer (at least he is if those quotes in the movie are from his diaries).

Along with Brokeback Mountain, The Motorcycle Diaries is another movie that Green Left Weekly had the audacity to praise from the hilltops. Considering how atrocious the portrayal of women is in this movie I really wonder what right socialists have to claim that they are struggling for a world in which all people are free from persecution.

Movies like this make me feel persecuted. The validation of these movies by the Australian left makes me feel as though queer feminists have no allies.

I really wish I could stop giving a shit about politics.

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[info]watershed2
2006-02-15 01:15 pm UTC (link)
Considering it's nonfiction, supposedly, I'm inclined to think that the movie's portrayal of such things doesn't make it a bad movie so much as a reflection of some cultural realities, however distasteful.

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[info]_allecto_
2006-02-16 07:36 am UTC (link)
I personally believe that all texts regardless of whether they are non-fiction or fiction should never ever romaticise things like prostitution. Nor should they validate the patriarchal ownership that men have over women. This movie did not just reflect a cultural reality, it held that cultural reality up as a positive thing.

This movie did not show other cultural realities in the same light. For example, we are meant to sympathise with the man who enters into the mines. Here the audience is told that capitalism (a cultural reality) is having a negative impact on this poor man.

If the issue of prostitution and of women being property (diamonds) was treated in the same manner as the man being sent to the mines I would applaud this movie.

All movies filter cultural realities in different ways. They control the way we interpret reality. This movie was clearly telling us that the cultural reality of patriarchy is a positive aspect of both women and men's lives. Capitalism, on the other hand, is not.

Therefore I consider this a sexist movie.

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[info]watershed2
2006-02-16 08:48 am UTC (link)
I definitely agree that the film's portrayal contain sexism..and heck, having recently spent 6 months in those same countries, I certainly know it's a sexist culture where such practices occur..but given that the film is purportedly the screen portrayal of Che and Alberto's actual diaries, do you think the film could be a reflection of the attitudes of those men themselves, rather than a fault of the movie? I mean, as far as I know, Che took up the fight against capitalism, but not the banner of feminism. It's hard for me to judge having not read the diaries yet..

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[info]_allecto_
2006-02-16 09:46 am UTC (link)
And that is exactly my point. Socialists say they are against sexism and yet they completely deify misogynist bastards like Che Guevara. In portraying Che as an unequivocal humanitarian without questioning his sexist attitudes and the way in which he treated women, isn't the (unintended) message of the movie that women aren't really human so their rights don't matter?

The message of this movie was not: Che is sexist.

The message of this movie was not even: Che is wonderful in spite of his sexism.

The message of this movie was: Che is wonderful.

Therefore the movie is complicit in advocating sexism within a leftist framework. I personally cannot stomach such duplicity.

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[info]watershed2
2006-02-16 10:17 am UTC (link)
I mostly agree..except my impression from the movie was not as extreme as that Che was a "misogynist bastard." He may have been ignorant of a feminist perspective/mindset, but I didn't see him actively or maliciously abusing women. (Alberto was worse.)

And re your initial post, I'm just curious what you didn't like about the portrayal of women in Brokeback Mountain? I felt like the marital dysfunction, mistreatment, and suffering of the women was made pretty clear; I felt like they were indeed shown to be victims of the situation and the forces of sexism and homophobia/heterosexism in their social context.

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[info]_allecto_
2006-02-19 08:04 am UTC (link)
well i guess i just don't like men who treat women as possessions.

Yeah the treatment of women wasn't too bad in relation to homophobia. But I don't think that this movie resisted patriarchy at all. When Alma divorced Ennis she got with her boss. And everything in that marriage was shown as fine and dandy.

Also Jack's wife was shown as being quite happy to be bossed around by her father and then by her husband. This wasn't shown as a problem at all.

And at the end Ennis basically validates his daughter's hetero marriage. Therefore marriage itself isn't a problem, nor is patriarchy, the only problem which affects women is homophobia against men.

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[info]dis_senter
2006-02-15 10:49 pm UTC (link)
Thank the various forces that I was drunk when I watched this movie. Even with my critical edge dulled it was bad enough.

The validation of these movies by the Australian left makes me feel as though queer feminists have no allies.

Er...we don't. But that is all as it should be, really since feminists are evil, and people who are "gay" and "lesbian" are okay, but probably not if they also go around calling themselves queer feminists. And besides, socialism will bring liberation to women. The socialists say it so much, it must be true.

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[info]_allecto_
2006-02-16 07:40 am UTC (link)
yeah sure, these socialist movies make me feel so liberated.

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