I'm glad some French film makers have said they hate #MeToo.
Glad, I tell ya.
Because I have hated damn near every french film I have ever seen due to its depiction of women.
The reason I'm glad the irrelevant french actress Catherine Deneuve and a percentage of the french film industry hates #MeToo is because it confirms, for me personally, that the french and how they see women is seriously sexist and messed up. Frankly, I think the internalized sexism that women suffer from in France must be off the chain.
For a long time, I thought it was just me. But Catherine Deneuve and the 100 french film makers and scholars that backed her up have just proven IT'S NOT ME. IT'S THEM
PLOTS OF FRENCH FILMS
(that I saw back to back to back to back)
1) One movie was about this white kid named Jules, maybe 19 or 20 years old, who is in love with music in general and particularly in love with this black opera star who refuses to have herself recorded in any form. He goes to all her concerts, like she's The Grateful Dead or something, and records a bootleg at a concert. Criminals are trying to kill him to get the recording and sell it for millions of dollars.
The hero winds up being a white pedophile (implied) with an Asian girlfriend who looks like she's no more than 14 years old to his forty, but supposedly sexy.
2) Another film was about how fancy free and sexy and half naked this white woman was to this very, very, VERY average looking white guy.
She didn't do one damn thing that made a lick of sense for 1.5 hours then gouged her own eyes out just before the end of the film. Her incredible freedom and joie de vivre was mental illness, I guess.
My eyes were open, but I was comatose 15 minutes in. I think that's what happened.
3) The third film starts off with another EXTREMELY average looking white guy seeing this waif supposedly-beautiful white girl--that he's knows but doesn't really know- at a party or a wedding reception.
He goes home in the rain bummed out he couldn't think of a way to get to know her better. White girl then shows up at his door soaking wet. He goes to get her a towel, he comes back and she's naked waiting for the towel, while behaving like an innocent 10 year old
BARF.
They start to date. We find out Wackadoo is living in the basement of an empty mansion that her mother owns, who's always dancing with some young guy. There's a strange smell in the basement. Turns out it's some guy the girl killed a while ago. When the police arrest her, she's pouty and confused that everybody all hyper about her killing someone for no apparent reason. Sexy mental illness again.
4) The other french films I've seen that were NOT teenage-boy wet dreams filmed by 50 year pot bellied french reject, had 35 to 40 year old women in them instead of teenagers. And the women were bitter and smoking all the time, having that sex they didn't appear to enjoy...which somehow was supposed to make them sophisticated and wise
I like foreign films.
I hate french foreign films.
And I hate that Blockbuster is gone because that was really the only way I had of perusing foreign films and indie films and deciding a DVD cover looked interesting enough to give a shot. (Pssst! Trust me, a DVD cover has to look VERY interesting in order for me to be willing to read subtitles. )
But I found myself wanting to hit myself over the head with a bat every SINGLE time I broke down and got a french film that looked interesting.
Now that I look at this list, I can be more specific.
I HATE
FRENCH WOMEN
IN FRENCH FILMS
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/movies/catherine-deneuve-and-others-denounce-the-metoo-movement.html
Catherine Deneuve and french others hating the United States #MeToo and #TimesUp movements mean we are on the right track.
The one point Deneuve might have is that the men accused are disappearing too quickly.
But the reason the men are disappearing so quickly is because their employers CONGRESS, NBC, PBS, etc are trying to damage control before the whole sordid mess becomes too detailed and the employers get splashed with more than just mud.
I feel like we got one-tenth of the story on a bunch of men who just disappeared all of a sudden. I was disappointed in Charlie Rose, but I know there was more there. But I don't know that we had a right to know more. If the women involved didn't want to expose themselves, then they didn't.
Rape victims don't have to say what happened blow by blow to the public, and neither do sexual harassment victims....for the same reason. It's humiliating. The offender, the employer, and the victim get to know the details.
And I felt the same way about Congressman John Conyers -- that there was more there that we didn't get to hear. I feel like Conyers' legacy was about to be destroyed--not just damaged--if he didn't shut the investigation down quickly.
That's probably why Matt Lauer went fairly quickly and quietly too. The large amount that we heard about Lauer in a short time seems to indicate there was tons that could have been exposed about him AND ABOUT how NBC covered it up. When a man is bold enough to give a female coworker a sex toy, everybody knows he's a dirt bag --and for some of the men, he's a bold dirt bag they admire.
For some men, leaving quickly meant legacy damaged but not destroyed.
And that would especially appealing to some men if they think #MeToo will pass and things will go back to status quo-- which I was worried about until #TimesUp. But now women's groups, as part of #TimesUp, are putting together resources and money to sue employers. And they are on their way to proposing legislation.
As for Deneuve's male witch hunt complaint, I for one would love to see each and every man get dragged over the coals and get all the detail about what they did for months on end -- for so long as women's identities were protected. I'd love to see them dragged instead of allowing these rich men to disappear after a few minutes of embarrassment. These men tortured their victims at work, for years in a lot of cases.
They deserve a hell of a lot more than losing their jobs. And a public dragging would be just the ticket for me.
Because these men are disappearing so quickly, the other thing that's happening is that the public isn't getting enough information to discern the difference between level 1 and level 10 sexual harassment. And level 10 harassment might be very close to rape or the threat of rape.
And all levels, might be offenses worth firing someone over
For example: If Ben Affleck squeezes a woman's breasts and she knocks one of his teeth out in response, in order to call that a draw both of them have to have committed a crime. He sexually assaulted her. She straight assaulted him. If the cops come, they can both press charges or both let it go.
As it stands now, the breast squeeze is STILL "boys will be boys" and an apology for a lot of men, Deneuve and her 100 followers. That's why a lot of the first articles, written by men, on sexual harassment were about "men misbehaving"
#MeToo and #TimesUP need to move toward criminalizing the boys-will-be-boys crap, at all levels, until even an ill-informed irrelevant french actress can understand it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/09/movies/catherine-deneuve-and-others-denounce-the-metoo-movement.html
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