my most exactly-like-the-caricature-people-imagine-me-as opinions is that i just straight up disagree with biopics as a concept
i think the the genre’s erosion of the lines between fiction and history make it almost inherently intensely propagandistic – usually what i hate about biopics is the sanitization of the biopic’s protagonist, whether that’s ‘the greatest showman’s’ wholesome p.t. barnum who is loved and respected by the people he puts in a literal freakshow or brian cox as churchill who does not at any point in the film express his enthusiasm about the mass death of bengali people. but also the opposite kind of weirds me out – like when the greatest showman villainizes jenny lind, which in the words of jenny nicholson comes across as 'a mean-spirited character assassination of a woman who died two hundred years ago’.
it just as a genre flattens deeply fascinating moments in history not only to a single person (another problem with the biopic, it has to have a Perspective on its protagonist and Stakes and so by necessity they are all advertisments for the great man theory of history) but to a narrativized caricature of that person who must be compressed into the narrative language of cinema. they range from propagandistic to exploitative in how they treat their subject matter and inevitably present some skewed and haphazard at best and explicitly doctored at worst version of history.
and idk one might say 'um well biopics aren’t really trying to say anyhting about history they just want to be a good narrative’ – to which i say, then why the fuck are they about real people? if chris nolan really wanted to make a film about the emotional weight of being complicit in a mass death without making an implicit political commentary on it and sanitizing / exonerating his subject by portraying him as a sympathetic tortured protagonist deatherino boy, then why not make a film about Bloppenheimer, inventor of the Solar Death Ray? if chernobyl didn’t want to be an anticommunist critique of the soviet union and just wanted to tell an abstract story about bureaucracy and mismanagement and the terrible fallout of small mistakes then why is about chernobyl?
tldr: i think that forcing history into the language of narrative cinema inevitably sacrifices a lot more about the history than anything it gains for the narrative
Taking misogynistic stereotypes for feminine women and repackaging them as just cute things that Femmes do is both sexist and homophobic.
There is nothing inherent about being Femme which prevents me from understanding how to operate power tools, build furniture, fix a car, or do any other traditionally “masculine” activities. What a shitty thing to imply, even in jest. Do better, folks. This is tiring.
Our community should not just replicate tired old stereotypes and drape them in a rainbow flag. Ask more of yourselves and each other.
