Friday, December 23, 2011

Stupid Holiday Movies and Connections

There seems to be this genre of holiday movies that involve:

1) A young woman who doesn't have a partner (because he dumped her or she hasn't found one).

2) She finds/pays a young man to pretend to be her partner (and this is fiance, because marriage in the future is a super important part of all this). The young man's pretense also includes pretending to be a high powered business/lawyer type, though he isn't.

3) True love is discovered, with maybe a bonus gay brother coming out. Future marriage is planned.


Bleargh!

Message for girls: Having a fiance or getting married is the most important thing ever!

Message for boys: While it's preferable to be a high powered business/lawyer type, you can still get the hot girl anyway because girls are desperate.

Have I just happened to see the wrong channel at the wrong time, or is this a new genre?

I can't help thinking about the coming home scene in Annie Hall, which involves Annie's brother at some point talking about his desire/dream of driving into oncoming traffic, while Alvy looks terrified.

And that reminds me that I'm listening to a book on CD on the road of stories from the New Yorker all of which are mostly about New York. So far, I'm not thrilled. The impression these stories give is that everyone in New York is white (except for a story by Jamaica Kincaid, which is narrated by a young black woman who's a nanny), wealthy (except for the Jamaica Kincaid story, most seem to have trust funds or if they have a job, it's as a director of some foundation or a professor who doesn't actually have to teach), and a jerk. (Sorry, the parallelism sucks there.)

Count me unimpressed.

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:35 PM

    You could be spending your time reading more Terry Pratchett books!

    (I got SNUFF for Christmas. Hilarious scene in which Commander Vimes walks into a Jane Austen novel and tells all the girls to get jobs and stop trying to find a lazy-ass "gentleman" to take care of them.)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8:41 AM

    LOVE Annie Hall. Just sayin'.

    That scene in the tennis club, with its supremely charming awkwardness? I could watch it every day and never get sick of it. "La-de-dah, la-de-dah."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous5:04 PM

    Happy holidays, Bardiac!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, I too am sick of books about rich white people who can't has marriage and then does has marriage. I mean wtf. Who cares?

    Or rich white people who has marriage and then has sad because having marriage and too much money is not ENOUGH to make you HAPPY. O RLY? No one could have ever predicted that I guess. And why do we actually care about this burning insight again?

    Gah.

    I read Jeffery Euminides' new book, The Marriage Plot, because I liked his last book, Middlesex, but sadly it was about rich white people (okay, one was half Greek) who could have have marriage.

    I read Maine, which the NYT said was one of the top books of 2011. Rich white people who has marriage and are not happy anyway.

    I read Blind Sight, by Meg Howry. At least it is not about people trying to be or regretting being married, and it is charming and well written (the main character is delightful, a 17 year old kid who displaces himself trying to make everyone love him) but rich white people again. Though maybe the kid is part Latino. But he says he looks white, and clearly he's been raised East Coast Wasp, so.

    I'm going back to SF. Nisi Shawl's book of short stories, Filter House: now there's a book.

    ReplyDelete
  5. NicoleandMaggie, at first I thought you meant you got snuff, the stuff you put up your nose, and the rest of the sentence didn't make sense at all. But Snuff must be a title?

    Ink, Thanks, and absolutely! Annie Hall is an amazing movie.

    Delagar, I just finished *The Uncommon Reader* which is totally about a rich, white woman, and totally fun at the same time.

    ReplyDelete