Chick flick

Last updated

Twilight (2008), a Paranormal Romance Drama which was a blockbuster success, has been described as a Chick Flick; pictured here is the director Chris Weitz alongside the film's stars: Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson. Twilight 20091110 Crillon Hotel Paris 003.jpg
Twilight (2008), a Paranormal Romance Drama which was a blockbuster success, has been described as a Chick Flick; pictured here is the director Chris Weitz alongside the film's stars: Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and Robert Pattinson.

Chick flick is a slang term, sometimes used pejoratively, for the film genre catered specifically to women's interests, and is marketed toward women demographics. They generally tend to appeal more to a younger female audience and deals mainly with love and romance. [4] [5] Although many types of films may be directed toward a female audience, the term "chick flick" is typically used only in reference to films that contain personal drama and emotion or themes that are relationship-based (although not necessarily romantic, as films may focus on parent-child or friend relationships). Chick flicks often are released en masse around Valentine's Day. [1] [2] Feminists such as Gloria Steinem have objected to terms such as "chick flick" and the related genre term "chick lit", [6] and a film critic has called it derogatory. [7]

Contents

Definitions

Generally, a chick flick is a film designed to have an innate appeal to women, typically young women. [2] Defining a chick flick is, as The New York Times has stated, more of a parlor game than a science. [8] These films are generally held in popular culture as having formulaic, paint-by-numbers plot lines and characters. This makes usage of the term "problematic" for implying "frivolity, artlessness, and utter commercialism", according to ReelzChannel. [1] However, several chick flicks have received high critical acclaim for their stories and performances. For example, the 1983 film Terms of Endearment received Academy Awards for Best Screenplay, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Actor in a Supporting Role. [9] More recently, the film La La Land (called a chick flick in some circles), featuring both Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, won Best Actress at the Academy Awards. Both of these actors were well known for their roles in chick flicks before jumping to the academy level.

Some frequent elements of chick flicks include having a female protagonist, [1] thematic use of the color pink (along with metaphorical allusions of the color), [2] and romance and/or dating-based storylines. [3] Longtime producer Jerry Bruckheimer has remarked about the plots, "How do you cope with money and love?" [8]

Women are typically portrayed in chick flicks as sassy, noble victims, or klutzy twentysomethings. Romantic comedies (rom-coms) are often also chick flicks. However, rom-coms are typically respected more than chick flicks because they are designed to appeal to men and women.[ citation needed ]

Female MSN.com commentator Kim Morgan has written:

[C]inema just wouldn't be the same without movies for and about women. And we don't just mean movies about pretty women, but all women and their issues – something many guys don't usually have the patience for in real life. That's what sisters are for, right? Right... sisters or movies. [10]

History

The term "chick flick" was not widely used until the 1980s and 1990s. It has its roots in the "women's pictures" of the early twentieth century, which portrays the woman as a victim and housewife, and later the film noir of the 1940s and early 1950s, which portrays the threat of sexualized women. [11] [12] [13] In the 1950s, many women who were in the workforce during World War II faced the transition back into the home. Brandon French notes that the women's films of the 1950s "shed light on a different cluster of issues and situations women faced in their transition from the forties to the sixties: romance, courtship, work, marriage, sex, motherhood, divorce, loneliness, adultery, alcoholism, widowhood, heroism, madness, and ambition." [14]

The 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's , commonly known as one of the "classic" films from the golden age of cinema, is sometimes considered an early chick flick due to common elements such as dealing with loneliness, obsessive materialism, and happy endings. [1] [15] Author Molly Haskell has suggested that chick flicks are very different from the women's films of the 1940s and 1950s in that they now "sing a different tune." She feels that they are "more defiant and upbeat, post-modern and post-feminist."[ citation needed ]

In the U.S. in the 1980s, a succession of teenage drama pictures also labeled as chick flicks were released, many by director John Hughes. These often had a different and more realistic tone than previous chick flicks, with dramatic elements such as abortion and personal alienation being included. [1]

Several chick flicks have been patterned after the story of Cinderella and other fairy tales (e.g. A Cinderella Story , Ever After , and Pretty Woman ), or even Shakespeare in the case of She's the Man and 10 Things I Hate About You . In addition, a large number are adapted from popular novels (e.g. The Princess Diaries and The Devil Wears Prada ) and literary classics (e.g. Little Women ). While most films that are considered chick flicks are lighthearted, some suspense films also fall under this category, such as What Lies Beneath .

After the blockbuster success of the 2008 drama/romance film Twilight , Paul Dergarabedian of Media By Numbers remarked, "[t]he word 'chick flick' is going to have to be replaced by big box-office girl-power flick" and that "[t]he box-office clout of the female audience is just astounding, and it's been an underserved audience for way too long". He also said, "they have no trouble finding money for the things they're passionate about." According to Fandango.com, more than 75% of Twilight's opening-weekend audience was female. [3]

Criticism of the term

The term chick flick has generated several negative responses from the modern feminist community. Most criticisms of the genre concentrate on the negative consequences that arise from gendering certain interests, in this case film. Author of The Chick Flick Paradox: Derogatory? Feminist? or Both?, Natalia Thompson, states that chick flicks are "an attempt to lump together an entire gender's interests into one genre." [12]

While the tailoring of interests may seem helpful and natural, many critics argue that unnecessary gendering can have negative consequences on many different social groups. [16] There is evidence from Russian social scientist Natal'ia Rimashevskaia that gender stereotypes further perpetuated by the media can lead to discrimination against women and limit their "human and intellectual potential." [16]

More criticisms of the term arise from actual content of the films in the chick flick genre and how the content affects society's perception of women. Some say that chick flicks are micro-aggressions. [17] Micro-aggressions are actions or exchanges that degrade a person based on his or her membership in a "race, gender, age, and ability." [17]

Critique of the genre

Despite the genre's popular successes, some film critics take issue with the content most chick flicks have in common. Although the subcategories represent different plot lines, all five[ which? ] have several characteristics in common. Many chick flicks can have the "ironic, self-deprecating tone" which film theorist Hilary Radner associates with chick lit. [18] This tone is one of the defining characteristics of the genre, and many[ quantify ] feel that it lacks substance compared to other genres. [19] [ need quotation to verify ] Radner also goes on to say the genre is "incredibly heteronormative and white-washed." [19] These common characteristics of the genre can lead to criticism from minority groups and social-justice activists. [19] More issues with the genre emerge from the opinion that chick flicks play to every woman's "patriarchal unconscious". [20]

In her article Structural Integrity, Historical Reversion, and the Post-9/11 Chick Flick, Diane Negra focuses on several romantic comedies, deemed to be chick flicks, set in New York City after the attacks on September 11, 2001. [21] She claims that the films "centralize female subjectivity but more compellingly undertake political work to stabilize national identity post-9/11." [21] Political and social upheaval following the attacks led to a need for films that show the importance of protecting gender and family norms, or "ideological boundaries", as opposed to the emphasis on "survivalism" and "homeland security" used to protect national boundaries, seen in the action films at the time. [21] Juxtaposed with the "politically innocent" genre of the pre-9/11 period, the films are rife with political undertones that are meant "to stabilize national identity post-9/11". [21]

While most chick flicks center around a romantic conquest, Alison Winch ("We Can Have It All") writes about films she calls "girlfriend flicks". [22] These movies emphasize the relationships between friends instead of focusing on a love connection; examples include Bride Wars and Baby Mama .

According to Winch,

Girlfriend flicks often have savvy, "nervous," female voice-overs mirroring typical romantic comedies, but addressing female spectators in their assumption of the mutual minefield of negotiating relationships, body, work, family, depression—issues prevalent in conduct, diet, and self-help books marketed specifically to women. [22]

Winch also states that girlfriend flicks criticize "second wave feminism's superficial understanding of female solidarity" by showing "conflict, pain, and betrayal acted out between women". [22] By emphasizing the "complexities of women's relationships", the girlfriend flick breaks the mold for the usual chick flick and allows the genre to gain a bit of depth. [22]

Examples

The following films have been characterized as chick flicks by some commentators:

See also

Related Research Articles

Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on theories that include feminist themes including but not limited to gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, and reproduction. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.

Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.

Romance film Film genre

Romance films or romance movies are romantic love stories recorded in visual media for broadcast in theaters and on television that focus on passion, emotion, and the affectionate romantic involvement of the main characters and the journey that their love takes them through dating, courtship or marriage. Romance films make the romantic love story or the search for strong and pure love and romance the main plot focus. Occasionally, romance lovers face obstacles such as finances, physical illness, various forms of discrimination, psychological restraints or family that threaten to break their union of love. As in all quite strong, deep and close romantic relationships, tensions of day-to-day life, temptations, and differences in compatibility enter into the plots of romantic films.

Chick lit was a term widely used in the 1990s and early 2000s to describe popular fiction targeted at younger women. Though still in common usage, the term's popularity has declined since the late 2000s: it has fallen out of fashion with publishers while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism.

Elsie Jane Wilson Australian film director

Elsie Jane Wilson was a cinema actress, director, and writer during the early film era. She took part in the productions of the silent film era and starred in over thirty films. Between the years of 1916 and 1919, Wilson was credited for producing, writing two films, and directing eleven films. She was best known in the genres of dramas and comedy dramas.

The term postfeminism is used to describe reactions against contradictions and absences in feminism, especially second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism. The term postfeminism is sometimes confused with subsequent feminisms such as fourth-wave feminism and xenofeminism.

Buddy film Film genre in which two people of the same sex are non-romantically paired

The buddy film is a subgenre of adventure and comedy film in which two people—often both men—are put together and on an adventure, a quest, or a road trip. The two often contrast in personality, which creates a different dynamic onscreen than a pairing of two people of the opposite gender. The contrast is sometimes accentuated by an ethnic difference between the two. The buddy film is commonplace in American cinema; unlike some other film genres, it endured through the 20th century with different pairings and different themes.

The women in prison film is a subgenre of exploitation film that began in the early 20th century and continues to the present day.

Lesbian erotica Visual art depiction of female-to-female sexuality

Lesbian erotica deals with depictions in the visual arts of lesbianism, which is the expression of female-on-female sexuality. Lesbianism has been a theme in erotic art since at least the time of ancient Rome, and many regard depictions of lesbianism to be erotic.

Women's cinema is a variety of topics bundled together to create the work of women in film. This can include women filling behind the scene roles such as director, cinematographer, writer, and producer while also addressing the stories of women and character development through screenplays.

Video vixen Model in hip hop music videos and performances

A video vixen is a female model who appears in hip hop-oriented music videos. The video vixen image has become a staple in popular music, especially within the genre of hip hop. Many video vixens are aspiring actors, singers, dancers, or professional models. Women from various cultures have been portrayed either as fragile, manipulative, fetishistic, or submissive within contemporary music lyrics, videos, concert and movie soundtracks.

Erika Lust Swedish pornographic film director

Erika Lust is a Swedish erotic film director, screenwriter and producer. Since the debut of her first indie erotic film The Good Girl in 2004, Lust has been cited as one of the current leading participants in the feminist pornography movement, asserting that an ethical production process sets her company apart from mainstream pornography sites. She has no problem calling her films porn, since she expects viewers to be sexually aroused, unlike other directors of erotic films who make a distinction between their work and porn even when both types contain sexually explicit scenes. She has written several books, as well as directed and produced a number of award-winning films.

Women warriors in literature and culture

The portrayal of women warriors in literature and popular culture is a subject of study in history, literary studies, film studies, folklore history, and mythology. The archetypal figure of the woman warrior is an example of a normal thing that happens in some cultures, while also being a counter stereotype, opposing the normal construction of war, violence and aggression as masculine. This convention-defying position makes the female warrior a prominent site of investigation for discourses surrounding female power and gender roles in society.

Womans film Film genre

The woman's film is a film genre which includes women-centered narratives, female protagonists and is designed to appeal to a female audience. Woman's films usually portray "women's concerns" such as problems revolving around domestic life, the family, motherhood, self-sacrifice, and romance. These films were produced from the silent era through the 1950s and early 1960s, but were most popular in the 1930s and 1940s, reaching their zenith during World War II. Although Hollywood continued to make films characterized by some of the elements of the traditional woman's film in the second half of the 20th century, the term itself disappeared in the 1960s. The work of directors George Cukor, Douglas Sirk, Max Ophüls, and Josef von Sternberg has been associated with the woman's film genre. Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, and Barbara Stanwyck were some of the genre's most prolific stars.

Feminist pornography is a genre of film developed by or for those dedicated to gender equality. It was created for the purpose of encouraging people in their pursuit of freedom through sexuality, equality, and pleasure.

Neofeminism describes an emerging view of women as becoming empowered through the celebration of attributes perceived to be conventionally feminine, that is, it glorifies a womanly essence over claims to equality with men. It is a term that has come into use in the early 21st century to refer to a popular culture trend, what critics see as a type of "lipstick feminism" that confines women to stereotypical roles, while it erodes cultural freedoms women gained through the second-wave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s in particular.

Rosalind Gill

Rosalind Clair Gill is a British sociologist and feminist cultural theorist. She is currently Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at City, University of London. Gill is author or editor of ten books, and numerous articles and chapters, and her work has been translated into Chinese, German, Portuguese, Spanish and Turkish.

Media and gender refers to the relationship between mass media and gender, and how gender is represented within media platforms. These platforms include but are not limited to film, radio, television, advertisement, social media, and video games. Initiatives and resources exist to promote gender equality and reinforce women's empowerment in the media industry and representations. For example, UNESCO, in cooperation with the International Federation of Journalists, elaborated the Gender-sensitive Indicators for Media contributing to gender equality and women's empowerment in all forms of media.

Women in film Women involved in the film industry

Women are involved in the film industry in all roles, including as film directors, actresses, cinematographers, film producers, film critics, and other film industry professions, though women have been underrepresented in creative positions.

The female gaze is a feminist theory term representing the gaze of the female spectator, character or director of an artistic work, but more than the gender it is an issue of representing women as subjects having agency. As such both genders can create films with a female gaze. It is a response to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey's term "the male gaze", which represents not only the gaze of a heterosexual male viewer but also the gaze of the male character and the male creator of the film. In that sense it is close, though different, from the Matrixial gaze coined in 1985 by Bracha L. Ettinger. In contemporary usage, the female gaze has been used to refer to the perspective a female filmmaker (screenwriter/director/producer) brings to a film that would be different from a male view of the subject. The female gaze is not about banning sex, desire and fantasies, but about showing that these can exist without objectification. It puts men, women and everybody on equal footing.

Vanessa Parise is an American film director, writer, producer, and actress based in NYC, New York. Her first feature film Kiss the Bride won the Golden Starfish Award at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2002. Her television movies, Perfect High and Drink Slay Love have been named by the Lifetime’s Broad Focus initiative. Parise has been nominated for Leo Awards for Best Direction for Lighthouse in 2015, for Perfect High in 2016, for Beyond in 2018, and for The Simone Biles Story in 2019. Her television movie The Simone Biles Story was nominated for Best Television Movie and Best Lead Actress by the NAACP Awards in 2019.

References

Notes
  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Eber, Hailey. "Our Valentine to You and Yours: 10 Chick-Flicks that Don't Totally Suck". ReelzChannel. Archived from the original on December 29, 2010. Retrieved October 2, 2010.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Abramowitz, Rachel (February 14, 2009). "'Chick flicks' are really starting to click". The Los Angeles Times . Retrieved October 4, 2010.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 "'Twilight' is the new breed of chick-flick". msnbc.msn.com. November 25, 2008. Archived from the original on December 29, 2010. Retrieved September 27, 2010.
  4. ↑ Simpson, John, ed. (2009). Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, on CD-ROM Version 4.0. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-956383-8.
  5. ↑ Stevenson, Angus; Lindberg, Christine A., eds. (2010). New Oxford American Dictionary, Third Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 300. ISBN   978-0-19-539288-3.
  6. ↑ Colgan, Jenny (July 13, 2007). "Chick flicks or prick flicks, they're just films". The Guardian.
  7. ↑ Kaufman, Amy (February 6, 2013). "'Safe Haven' premiere: Don't call it a 'chick flick,' please" – via LA Times.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Cieply, Michael (April 9, 2008). "Wary Hollywood Plans More Chick-Flicks (Hoping to Lure the Guys)". The New York Times . Retrieved October 4, 2010.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Terms of Endearment". New York University: litmed.med.nyu.edu Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database. Retrieved September 30, 2010. Terms of Endearment shares with films Beaches, Steel Magnolias, and One True Thing the popular status of melodramatic 'chick-flick'.
  10. 1 2 3 Morgan, Kim. "Top 10 Chick-Flicks". MSN.com. Archived from the original on December 3, 2010. Retrieved December 3, 2010.
  11. ↑ Ferriss, Suzanne and Mallory Young (2008). Chick Flicks: Contemporary Women at the Movies. New York: Routledge. p. 14.
  12. 1 2 Thompson, Natalia M. (January 1, 2007). "The Chick Flick Paradox: Derogatory? Feminist? Or Both?". Off Our Backs. 37 (1): 43–45. JSTOR   20838769.
  13. ↑ Kaplan, E. Ann (1983). Women & Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, Inc. pp.  6. ISBN   0416317502.
  14. ↑ French, Brandon (1978). On The Verge of Revolt: Women in American Films of the Fifties . New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. pp. xxii–xxiii. ISBN   0804422206.
  15. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Halpern, Michelle (October 27, 2009). "The Best Chick-Flicks: Then and Now". stylecaster.com. Archived from the original on September 15, 2010. Retrieved September 27, 2010.
  16. 1 2 Rimashevskaia, Natal'ia (2008). "Gender Stereotypes And The Logic Of Social Relations". Russian Social Science Review. 49 (3): 35–48. doi:10.1080/10611428.2008.11065289.
  17. 1 2 Cousins, Linwood (2014). SAGE Reference - Encyclopedia of Human Services and Diversity. doi:10.4135/9781483346663. ISBN   9781452287485.
  18. ↑ Radner, Hilary (2010). Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture. Routledge. ISBN   9781136995996 . Retrieved January 1, 2019. As 'chick lit,' both novels have in common - unlike other genres directed at women readers, such as format romances - an ironic, self-deprecating tone [...].
  19. 1 2 3 Radner, Hilary (2011). Neo-Feminist Cinema: Girly Films, Chick Flicks, and Consumer Culture. New York, New York: Routledge. pp. 117–119. ISBN   978-0-415-87773-2.
  20. ↑ Erens, Patricia (1990). Issues in Feminist Film Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp.  59–61. ISBN   0-253-31964-1.
  21. 1 2 3 4 Negra, Diane (2008). "Structural Integrity, Historical Reversion, and the Post-9/11 Chick Flick". Feminist Media Studies. 8: 51–68. doi:10.1080/14680770701824902.
  22. 1 2 3 4 Winch, Alison (2012). "We Can Have It All". Feminist Media Studies. 12: 69–82. doi:10.1080/14680777.2011.558349.
  23. ↑ "Entertainment". mom.me.
  24. 1 2 3 Samantha (May 31, 2020). "55 Best Chick Flicks Of All Time". Perhaps Maybe Not. Retrieved September 16, 2021.
  25. ↑ "a rare commodity, a military chick-flick". IMDb.com.
  26. ↑ Jacobson, Colin (April 13, 2007). "An Officer and a Gentleman (1982)". dvdmg.com. Retrieved August 22, 2011. Officer manages to be one of those rare films that deftly treads the line between guy movie and “chick-flick”.
  27. ↑ "Top 10 Chick Flicks That Men Secretly Love - Film Junk".
  28. ↑ "just for Graham Hartle, his favourite chick-flick". Archived from the original on August 18, 2012.
  29. ↑ Ellison, Richie. "A chick-flick turned b-movie road adventure". LoveFilm. Archived from the original on April 3, 2012. Retrieved October 26, 2011.
  30. ↑ James Berardinelli (1995). "Waiting to Exhale". reelviews.net. Retrieved October 2, 2010. No doubt about it -- this is a "women's movie" (or, as it's alternatively referred to, a "chick-flick")
  31. ↑ Spindle, Les (August 5, 2009). "The First Wives Club -- Theater Review". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved October 2, 2010. The menopausal chick-flick "The First Wives Club" (1996), based on the novel by Olivia Goldsmith, primarily demonstrated that mediocrity needn't preclude boxoffice success
  32. ↑ "Chickflicking Reviews Deadpool". 2016. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  33. 1 2 3 4 James Berardinelli; Roger Ebert (2005). Reel views 2: the ultimate guide to the best 1,000 modern movies on DVD and video. pp.  243, 304, 347–348, 370. ISBN   978-1-932112-40-5.
  34. ↑ St. John, Nina. "10 Best Chick-Flick Quotes". Screen Junkies. Retrieved December 4, 2012.
  35. 1 2 3 4 5 "Memorable and Great "Chick" Flicks". Filmsite.org . Retrieved October 26, 2011.
  36. ↑ Boursaw, Jane Louise. "Top 10 Chick Flicks Bridget Jones Diary (2001)". Kaboose. Archived from the original on May 21, 2011. Retrieved August 12, 2013.
  37. ↑ Adeojo, Layomi (October 3, 2020). "More than just a chick flick: Why 'Mean Girls' is a cinematic masterpiece". The Miami Hurricane.
  38. ↑ Beyrer, Bill. "The Notebook - Review". Cinemablend.com . Retrieved October 2, 2010. The Notebook is a chick-flick. Not just any kind of chick-flick, but the kind of chick-flick your parents would like.
  39. ↑ Oloffson, Kristi (May 25, 2010). "Top 10 Worst Chick Flicks". Time . If it were ever possible to cram all the glittering boy-meets-girl, high-school-love-story stereotypes into one movie, A Cinderella Story does it in spades. The 2004 movie stars Hilary Duff, whose father dies in an earthquake, forcing her to work in a diner for her evil stepmother who keeps her from chasing her college dreams. She meets a boy (Chad Michael Murray) online, but he’s in the cool crowd and she doesn’t fit in (even though she’s beautiful and smart). They agree to meet on the school dance floor, where she wears a mask barely covering her eyes so he magically can’t tell who she really is (even though you can see her entire face). Duff’s performance in the movie snagged her a Razzie nomination in 2005 for Worst Actress. Did anyone expect anything more? TIME takes a look at some other not-so-great films that have been cruelly pitched at female audiences
  40. ↑ Mele, Rick. "The Proposal". AskMen.com . Retrieved October 2, 2010. this is a chick-flick so Andrew’s choice and what yours might have been aren’t necessarily going to match up
  41. ↑ "The Movie Report Archive: June 2009". mrbrownmovies.com. June 19, 2009. Retrieved October 3, 2010. (quote) there is something to be said for such a relentlessly by-the-numbers chick-flick programmer that is nonetheless a breezily enjoyable sit
  42. ↑ "How 50 Shades of Grey mirrors scenes from other popular chick-flicks". tkgnews.com. 2015. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
Bibliography


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.