Friday, November 20, 2009

Conversations with Cathy

Me: I really want to dump all over New Moon, but as I haven't read the books and have no intention of ever seeing the movie, I really don't have the right, do I?

Cathy: Nope. You always get mad when religious groups dump on movies you like but have no plan on ever seeing. You think they're hypocrites.

Me: This is true. Oh well. Besides, it's not like the movie is made for people like me anyway.

Cathy: Who is it made for then?

Me: Well, there are three target audiences - teenage girls, soccer moms and gay men.

Cathy: Well, teenage girls like the guys, and I guess gay men like the guys. And I guess the soccer moms have something they can bond with teenage girls with. This might be one of the few things that a mom and her daughter can talk about, especially when they're teenagers.

Me: I guess that's true, but...

Cathy: But?

Me: I just assumed they were cougars and wanted to fuck the guys as well.

Cathy: You're hopeless.

Last Five
1. Sand in my shoes - Dido
2. Never gonna happen - Lily Allen
3. Red light - U2
4. This is not America - David Bowie
5. Caroline - David Gray

8 comments:

Ron said...

Targetted at gay men? Ar you sure? Usually gay sex icons are more ambiguous than the little boys in New Moon. There are several subtexts here, violence, authority, hypermasulinity and rape. This is why "Oz" was so popular in the gay community. Same thing for Wolverine as portrayed by Hugh Jackman. Also Cops, truckers, bikers, any guy in a uniform, mechanics, bodybuilders, blah blah blah. Recently I noticed that Brad Pitt has grown this rather nasty looking biker beard... Cool!

Usually any star targetted at teenaged females will be as non-threatening as possible - bland good looks like Orlando Bloom or the Jonas Brothers or Shawn Cassidy. Long hair, clean shaven, skinny - the fewer secondary sexual characteristics the guy has the better. Young girls according to the guys in marketing want security in their fantasy relationships and not any of that complicated adult stuff like hair or fat whereas (many) gay men want all that nasty stuff.

Now to be fair - I like you will probably never see the Twilight movies, so I don't know much about the plots, the "guys" and girls or almost anything about this phenomena. Thankfully the marketing is not aimed at the middle aged male demographic I currently inhabit.

There is another hugh debate in here about how gay male popular sexuality internalizes homophobic assumptions but that is another comment for another day.

Jordan~Stephanie said...

Ron told me about this!

His reply is longer than the post!

This sparked a great conversation between Ron and I!

I love this blog.

Hungover.

Must go...

Jordan~Stephanie said...

P.S.. . . I'm going to see NEW MOON, right now!


Not really.

Anonymous said...

Hey,,,I just saw New Moon today. I loved the books and the movies not too bad either.Trying to figure out what category I fall into. I'm not a teenage girl nor a soccer mom nor a gay guy. Guess I'll have to be the cougar.....lol.

towniebastard said...

Ron, for the sake of satire, which I'm sure you know I'm engaging in, I'm using some pretty broad stereotypes. I'm sure there are some teenage girls who would rather shoot themselves in the head than endure five minutes of this. Or some moms who would view all of this as silliness.

And just as not all hetero guys would find Megan Fox attractive, I'm sure not all gay guys would go for the men/boys in New Moon.

However, do I think, say, a 20 year old gay guy would look at this movie and the male leads and have an indecent thought or two? Yes.

Or, as one of my favourite reviewers - James Berardinelli - wrote:

The movie's focal point is Bella's romantic choice: does she go with the soulful, suffering Edward (who always seems to be walking toward the camera in slow motion) or pledge herself to Jacob, who is marginally more interesting and charismatic (and who spends 3/4 of the film sans shirt and looking like he's posing for a gay porno video box cover). Based purely on physique, Jacob has the edge, but I guess there's a segment of fans who prefer Edward's goth look.

Ron said...

Satire - is that the one with exclamation marks or the one with an elipsis after it?

The point of the post seems to be your general idea that men and women or at least you and Cathy think differently sometimes. And you are poking fun at yourself so I get that.

I am not sure what I can tell you about 20 somethings, some probably would swoon over the boys in New Moon. The gay market (in good conscience I can't refer to it as a 'community' anymore) is so segmented that you can find a stereotype for every body type, bears, daddies. twinks, wolves and BDSM crossdressing auto-erotic asphixiation bikers. So I am sure there is a sub-set of gay guys out there who think New Moon is awesome.

And again within the context of very broad categories I still think there is a strain of internalized homophobia which pushes gay sexual stereotypes towards hyper masculine extremes mainly as a way to assert that while they might be "doing it" with guys but they aren't "fags". And the rest of the world knows this cause there are all these traditional symbols of masculinity rolled into the equation. None of that was the purpose of your posting, but it just got me thinking.

I can't speak to what is on the covers of gay porn DVDs as I don't own any. I've tried to buy it but I go to the store and it all looks so boring, even the BDSM, crossdressing, auto-asphixiation biker ones. I've always had a softspot for goths tho, but that is probably because I liked those old B/W silent movies... and black lipstick is HOT!

Anyway I probably have to go and see the film now just to see what it is all about. Hope you are having fun in the Sauga

Chris Windeyer said...

I saw the first one as a hostage, er, guest of my then-girlfriend. It was a steaming turd-heap of cinema fail.

No one, regardless of demographic, should like something that bad.

Anonymous said...

Craig -- if you stretch those three categories broadly enough, I am sure you can fit into one of them.

Cochrane