Chick Flicks Back in Fashion as Hollywood Cashes in on Girl Power

Movie moguls are calling it the "X-Box Factor" as young men stay in to play increasingly sophisticated video games, while women are flocking to the cinema.

By Philip Sherwell, The Daily Telegraph
20 Feb 2010

They will not be in line for any Oscars. But to the surprise of studios and disdain of reviewers, “chick flicks” often reliant on sappy storylines have emerged as Hollywood’s unexpected new celluloid success story.

Valentine’s Day, a film as packed with stars as it is devoid of plot, stormed to number one at the US box office when it opened last weekend – taking more than $56 million (£36m) despite dreadful reviews.

A week earlier, Dear John, a romantic number without big name buzz and only slightly better critical reception ousted the James Cameron hit Avatar from top spot.

Yet the fact that near every film to top the box office for more than three months has been female-focused does not reflect a growing enthusiasm among women for films: instead, it marks what Hollywood film moguls now refer to as the “Xbox” factor, in which young men and teenage boys are increasingly prefer playing sophisticated video games to watching movies.

“A lot of young males are spending much more time on the internet, games and UFC [ultimate fighting],” Peter Guber, chairman of Mandalay Pictures production company and former studio chief at Sony Pictures, told The Sunday Telegraph.

“They have not abandoned movies but they have diminished as a target, while the female audience has remained robust.”

Mr Guber, who has female-friendly films such as The Colour Purple and Flashdance to his name, said that women “have often been an underserved audience”, but “if you speak to the heart with a powerful emotional narrative, you will pull in a strong female audience”.

The shift in the balance of gender power has accompanied the explosion in the male-dominated video game market – worth about $21 billion in the US in 2008.

The same year, American box offices takings were nearly $10 billion, with another $22 billion spent on DVDs.

The predominantly male bosses of the film industry are now working out how to develop the lucrative new demographic in their business after hitting on a winning formula apparently by accident.

“Nobody saw it coming. Why not? One simple reason: Hollywood still doesn’t understand how to market to women,” noted Amanda Sloane Murray, a Los Angeles-based script consultant, in a commentary for The Wrap website that covers the entertainment industry.

The breakdown of the audiences for Dear John is striking. Some 84 per cent of the moviegoers were female and 64 per cent were under 25.

There was a similar mix for Valentine’s Day, which had the added benefit of an all-star cast that included Julia Roberts, Jennifer Garner, Jessica Alba, Shirley MacLaine, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Jamie Foxx and Bradley Cooper.

They were certainly not turning out in such droves as a result of the reviews.

The Rotten Tomatoes website, which aggregates reviews in America and Britain, recorded just 26 positive write-ups out of 151 for Valentine’s Day – or a dismal 17 per cent on its “tomatometer”.

Dear John fared slightly better with a 28 per cent rating – the same score as Twilight Saga.

“Valentine’s Day is being marketed as a date movie,” noted Roger Ebert, the doyen of US film critics.

“I think it’s more of a First-Date Movie. If your date likes it, do not date that person again. And if you like it, there may not be a second date.”

Plenty of others were even harsher. But fans of the film were spreading the word via Twitter and text message rather than reading such uncompromising commentary.

The result for Dear John was a movie that brought in nearly twice as much as the industry had expected.

“Following a weekend like this, studio executives inevitably walk into their Monday morning meetings and exchange confused looks,” said Miss Murray. “They talk about the success of the latest chick flick, shrug, chalk it up to serendipity and move on.

“Women are not one bloc of moviegoers whose needs can be pre-fitted into a predictable movie mould. Give us good movies, sexy movies, genuinely romantic movies. If you make them, we will come.”

Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film, reached a similar conclusion about out-of-touch male executives.

“There is a lot of pent-up demand for films featuring female protagonists,” she told The Sunday Telegraph. “For years, female audiences have been starved of the chance to see their lives portrayed on the big screen.

“The studios are run by men who just don’t get it when they see a female lead. For too long, the conventional wisdom among these male bosses has been that women don’t go to films featuring women for too long. Even when a movie like Sex And The City was a success, they thought it was a fluke.”

Of course, there have always been “chick flicks” and simply targeting female audiences is not an automatic guarantee of success. But studio bosses are now changing their attitudes.

“For as long as anyone can remember, it’s been taken as a given that the movie industry’s holy grail is 13-year-old boys,” said Nicole Laporte, who covers the business for The Daily Beast.

“Hence: Transformers, Iron Man, Ninja Assassin.”

“But the jaw-dropping success of films such as Twilight, High School Musical, and now, Dear John are proving that these days, it's girls who rule the entertainment industry.

"The movies may be alternately cheesy and sappy, and the scripts laughable, but teen and tween girls don’t care.”

Journal 2: Lesbianism in American Pop Culture

In recent years, lesbianism has become increasingly visible in American popular culture. In television, music, and film, lesbianism has seemingly reached a higher level of mainstream acceptance. Of course, lesbianism in the media has not always encountered total acceptance as portrayals of lesbianism still carry with them an element of taboo. Add to this complaints from the lesbian community that the lesbianism portrayed in popular culture is faux-lesbianism, defined by heterosexuals and crafted for the pleasure of men. Nonetheless, the past two decades has seen an exponential increase in lesbian imagery from The L Word to Ellen DeGeneres to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Why have lesbians, or at least acts of lesbianism, become so much more prominent? And why has society not embraced male/male displays of sexuality in the same way? Finally, are we in an era in which its okay for heterosexual women to be open about their sexual appreciation for other women? Explore lesbian imagery in American pop culture.

Include at least one of the following pieces in your discussion:

• "The Adam Lambert Double Standard" (Bitch Magazine)
• "Yep, She's Mainstream" (Time Magazine)
• "When Women Kiss: From TV Stunts to Mainstream Reality" (The Huffington Post)
• "Study Suggests Difference Between Female and Male Sexuality" (Science Daily)

Articles are located in the eR.

Due: Wednesday, March 3

He Breaks for Band Recitals

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg, The New York Times
February 12, 2010

IT is no secret that President Obama desperately wants Congress to pass legislation to overhaul health care. But last month, when Mr. Obama convened Congressional Democratic leaders at the White House for a marathon negotiating session, another priority intervened.

His 11-year-old daughter, Malia, had a band recital.

Thus did the president of the United States ditch his own health care talks — temporarily, at least — to slip off to Sidwell Friends School for a few hours to listen to Malia play the flute. When the recital was over, he returned to the White House, and everybody went back to work. The talks wrapped up at 1:30 a.m., and if the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; or anybody else had anything to say about the delay, they held their tongues.

“There are certain things that are sacrosanct on his schedule — kids’ recitals, soccer games, basketball games, school meetings,” David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, said in an interview the day after the session. “These are circled in red on his calendar, and regardless of what’s going on he’s going to make those. I think that’s part of how he sustains himself through all this.”

When Mr. Obama and his wife, Michelle, arrived in Washington little more than a year ago, Mrs. Obama promptly declared herself the mom in chief, and mothers across the nation watched as she juggled her duties as first lady with her responsibilities as a mother. But her husband, the president, conducts an unabashed juggling act of his own.

He knocks off work at 6 p.m. each evening to have dinner with his family, and has given his schedulers strict instructions that, if he must have night-time activities, they are to take place after 8 p.m. That includes matters of war; in November, as the commander in chief wrestled with sending more troops to Afghanistan, he called an 8 p.m. meeting of his national security team, in deference to his role as father in chief.

He squeezes in parent-teacher conferences, soccer and basketball games, and broke away from an economics briefing to call his younger daughte

r, Sasha, on her eighth birthday. (She was in London with her mother.) And when the White House announced that Mr. Obama would be traveling next month to Indonesia and Australia, the president’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was not shy about confirming that the trip was timed to coincide with the girls’ spring break.

“We spend a lot of time coordinating the girls’ holidays and vacation time,” said Valerie Jarrett, another senior adviser. “It doesn’t just drive Michelle’s schedule, but it drives the president’s as well.”

So far at least, Washington does not seem to have raised any eyebrows. When Mr. Obama told lawmakers why he was leaving the health talks, “We all said, ‘Absolutely, get out of here, go,’ ” said Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, who was there.

Yet even in today’s father-friendly world, Mr. Obama’s balancing act is not risk-free — especially in an economy where so many ordinary Americans are struggling. Critics could accuse him of slacking off when the country is in need. And this city is filled with politicians who have sacrificed their families for their jobs, so Mr. Obama must be careful not to generate resentment among those whose schedules must swing around his own.

“People elect you not to be a good family man, they elect you to fix their problems, and that’s the cold-hearted reality of it,” said John Feehery, a Republican political strategist. “And all those folks on the Hill, they’ve left all their families at home; they don’t have the luxury of skipping back home in the middle of the meeting to catch their daughter’s recital.”

In a sense, the 48-year-old president is reflecting attitudinal changes about fatherhood that are typical of men in his generation, said Ellen Galinsky, the president of the Families and Work Institute, a nonprofit research organization. Ms. Galinsky says men, now more than women, feel caught between work and parenthood; her surveys show that 59 percent of men report experiencing some or a lot of work/life conflict, up from 35 percent in 1977.

Yet while Mr. Obama’s advisers like to think he is setting an example for fathers everywhere, he does, in fact, have more flexibility than most — he is, after all, the boss. Because he gets to “live over the store,” as he often says, he doesn’t have the stress of making that mad dash for the subway to get home in time to relieve the baby sitter. At home, he never has to fix the leaky faucet or take out the trash. And if he needs to go back to the office to finish up work late at night, all he has to do is walk downstairs.

As Ms. Jarrett said, “He doesn’t have to rush here, because everything is the way he likes it to be.”

Still, Ms. Galinsky argues, that does not diminish the significance of the president’s choices. “You could argue on one hand that he has a lot more autonomy than most men, and that is absolutely 100 percent true,” she said. “But on the other hand, he’s got a lot more responsibility on his shoulders than most men.”

And Mr. Obama has had to give up a few things as well. When he lived in Chicago, he enjoyed driving Malia and Sasha to school; his huge entourage now makes that impractical. “Quite frankly, they don’t want him to,” Michelle Obama said of the girls in an interview last week with Larry King on CNN. “They think his motorcade is a complete embarrassment.”

After two years of being away from his daughters on the campaign trail, Mr. Obama made clear from the start that he intended to make up for lost time. Barely a week into his presidency, he set his first bill signing for 11 a.m. so he could attend a morning presentation at Sasha’s school. And in case there were doubts that the dinner hour was sacrosanct, Mr. Obama put an end to them last spring, as his economics team was in the thick of a heated debate over how to bail out faltering auto makers.

“It was getting close to 6, and they were not coming to some sort of resolution,” said one senior official, speaking anonymously to discuss the president’s private conversations. “The president said, ‘Look, I’m going to have dinner with my family, why don’t you guys spend a couple of hours thinking about this, and after they go to bed, I’ll come back and see if we can hash this out.’ ”

Mr. Obama is hardly the first president to feel the tug of fatherhood, but he does seem to be the first to so openly acknowledge working his schedule around his family. In the recent book “The Clinton Tapes,” the historian Taylor Branch reveals how President Clinton quietly put off an important trip to Japan in early 1996 so that he could stay home to help his daughter, Chelsea, then a high school junior, study for her mid-term exams. The decision infuriated former Vice President Al Gore, who viewed the trip as critical to smoothing tensions with Japan. Mr. Clinton ultimately went — three months after Mr. Gore thought he should have gone.

“Gore couldn’t believe that Clinton was baby-sitting, in his view,” Mr. Branch said in an interview. “What Clinton was saying was, ‘It’s junior year mid-terms, those are the last grades that go on your college applications.’ Whether he was a devoted father or an inattentive president — that’s the debate. But he didn’t express any misgivings about it.”

Nobody seems to be accusing Mr. Obama of being an inattentive president, though he did irk one powerful constituency — the Washington media elite — when the White House announced he would not be attending last year’s Gridiron Dinner, the annual white-tie affair in which the city’s high-society journalists poke fun at politicians in song and skits.

The decision earned Mr. Obama the distinction of becoming the first president since Grover Cleveland to miss the first Gridiron of his presidency, and the capital’s media mavens were especially bent out of shape when they discovered that spring break was taking place not in Chicago, as the White House had originally said, but rather at Camp David, the presidential retreat, a short 20-minute helicopter ride away.

When he first took office, Mr. Obama said he intended to run a family-friendly White House — provoking a now-infamous retort from his sharp-tongued chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who bluntly told the president, “family-friendly to your family.” Mr. Emanuel’s prediction has proved pretty much correct; most senior advisers to Mr. Obama see their own children far less than he sees his.

Even so, Anita Dunn, the former Obama communications director, says that by being so open about his own family obligations, Mr. Obama has given his advisers — both men and women — the license to be open about theirs.

“Many of us who have children of our own love this piece of him,” said Ms. Dunn, who has a teenage son. “Not only does he have no problem saying, ‘I have to do this, this is my priority,’ but it gives people who work for him the space to say, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t be at that meeting, because my child has an honor roll assembly.’”

Olympians Posing Nude, Poses Questions

By Laura Boswell, ESPN.com
Feb. 13, 2010

They crush balls into the court, swim faster than Flipper and punish their competition with the ferocity of Lindsay Lohan's dad at a family reunion.

If you weren't tuning in already, now you are.

But stand them next to one another in white bikinis and suddenly they are tender, demure, and innocent. They cradle one another's taut waists and gently caress the smalls of eachother's backs. So pure, so sweet, so loving ...

So full of it.

Nice try, but we can still see power behind those pouts. They're female Olympians, and just as they are dominating their respective sports, they'll dominate every guy's dreams until Beijing 2008.

That's exactly what they want.

And I say, good for them ... I think.

We're here, great rears -- get used to it!
America's best female athletes have come to a magazine stand near you. Or rather, the best female athletes who also happen to be tall, tan and toned.

Five Team USA women, including volleyball player Logan Tom and swimmer Amanda Beard, currently grace the cover of FHM's September issue and are featured in its "Sexy Olympic Special."

High jumper and Barbie reincarnation Amy Acuff, who also appears in FHM, fittingly set her bar even higher as Playboy's September cover girl. In its "Women of the Olympics" pictorial, Acuff is one of eight female Olympians who chose to bare all for the cameras.

Surprisingly, unlike similar escapades of the past -- think Katarina Witt -- there hasn't been too much flak accompanying Acuff's decision to pose nude. It seems like the higher authorities, including the USOC, are giving the matter a collective shrug and moving on to other problems (like how to get as many eyeballs in the stands).

Meanwhile, the athletes' responses have been gleefully defiant.

Of course I'm concerned that by posing nude or nearly so, these athletes might be "selling out." And I'm concerned that their actions might be undoing previous strides made for women in terms of earning respect as athletes. But mostly, I'm concerned because I'm really not all that concerned.

As a woman, and former college athlete, I should be more affected and have stronger opinions on this topic. And looking around, I can't help but wonder why others aren't more upset as well.

Has American culture come to this? Are sex and sports so commonly intertwined that FHM and Playboy have essentially become a sexier version of a Wheaties box?

I guess so.

But it's tough to judge these women without walking a mile in their um ... bikinis.

Logan Tom is no dummy, she's a Stanford grad.

Cover girls or gaffes?
Collectively, female athletes finally seem to be demanding their due, even if it means copping to the old adage "sex sells."

And why not? They're expected to be aggressive in their chosen sport. Why shouldn't that translate into their self-marketing efforts as well?

This particularly holds true for Olympians who don't see the endorsement dollars of higher-profile sports. It's not uncommon for Olympians to toil in obscurity and poverty to fulfill their dreams. Stories like that of gymnast Mohini Bhardwaj, who sacrificed by eating Power Bars and delivering pizzas during training, are all too common.

Ironically, were it not for a $20,000 check from pin-up girl Pamela Anderson, Bhardwaj may have not made it to Athens.

As far as the casual viewer is concerned, sports like gymnastics, volleyball and swimming come around once every four years. So, if not for the additional exposure, would you even recognize Amanda Beard if you saw her walking down the street?

At best, you might say, "Hey, isn't that the girl ... who did something ... athletic?"

After hanging up their sneakers, some Olympians aspire to be fulltime models. On her personal website, Acuff displays her modeling portfolio right next to her high jump stats.

And this is not a "male athletes get more money and attention than girls" thing. In fact, in this case, the women actually have a rare, albeit dubious, advantage over the fellas.

Today's female athlete can land just as many traditional corporate marketing deals as the guys, but for men, modeling outlets are pretty much limited to pseudo-sexy spreads like People's "50 Most Eligible Bachelors." There is no male counterpart to Playboy, unless you're counting Playgirl and that's just .... eeewww!

Sure, Michael Phelps is set for life but ... Quick! Name a member of the men's water polo team.

Nope, I can't either.

On a slow sports day, you could probably catch a televised beach volleyball game, but for the most part, to anyone outside that sport's community, Stein Metzger and Dax Holdren are just exceptionally tall guys who have to eat and pay the rent just like you and me.

Both male and female Olympians have small windows of opportunity in which to market themselves. They have to strike hard and fast -- even if the target is somewhat questionable. Otherwise, they're one sprained ankle or missed landing away from delivering pizzas and dreaming of what could have been.

Brandi Chastain brought jog bras to every guy's attention.

Buff and beautiful
Let's not forget that these female Olympians have some rock solid justifications for their cover girl aspirations -- starting with their six-pack abs and moving outward to just about every other toned and sculpted muscle on their bodies.

They have busted their butts, both literally and figuratively to get to the Games and the results can not be disputed. Unlike waif-like runway models, their bodies are trained, healthy and (somewhat) attainable. They're all sport and no silicone.

Why shouldn't they shake what their mamas (and 1,000 crunches a day) gave 'em?

And they're preconditioned to be comfortable in their own skin; their "uniforms" are swimsuits, bikinis, and leotards. So, it's not much of a stretch to pose in similarly "suggestive" attire.

I still don't understand why a big deal was made of Brandi Chastain pulling off her shirt after the U.S. women won the 1999 World Cup. A sports bra is a common sight at the gym and/or the local park. It's about as risqué as a sweatsock!

But here's the real deal: Whether it's guised as "an honor" or as a "boost for your sport," secretly the ability to pose for photos wearing blush instead of Ben-Gay, is also a great, big power trip. International attention is flattering, exciting and somewhat intoxicating, particularly on a sexy, not sandy stage.

These athletes have sacrificed and worked hard their entire lives. They've forgone proms and parties for practice. It's difficult to fault them for wanting to strut their stuff and say, "Hey, check me out!"

Who wouldn't want to get all gussied up and airbrushed, and get paid big bucks for it? And that goes for the guys too!

Matter of choice
Kerri Walsh is 6-foot-3, beautiful and whip thin. She is also the "world's best beach volleyball player." Walsh declined the magazine shoots. And I also say, good for her.

Walsh claims that she's a "terrible poser" and stated that the FHM cover is "really positive for athletes," but I can't help but respect her decision regardless of her reasoning.

No matter how I try to justify it, there's still something off about America's top female athletes being glamorized for their looks.

They're strong, smart, athletic and beautiful, and as a result, they're desirable. But there's still something inside me that believes being an Olympic athlete should be enough to stand on its own merits, and that Olympians belong on Wheaties boxes and not in men's magazines.

Ultimately, I've got to turn the question on myself: If I could fit into one of those bikinis would I do it?

Hell, yeah!

Laura Boswell covers sports and the city in and around Washington, DC. Turn-ons: The Daily Show, board games and a really good vodka tonic. Turn-offs: Fur coats, diet soda and weak penalties for parole violators. She can be reached at lauraeboswell@comcast.net.

Week 4

A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.

—Lana Turner

Week 4

M 2.15
NO CLASS—Furlough Day (University-wide)

W 2.17
READ: CR—“Being a Man” by Paul Theroux, “Taking Off the Gender Straitjacket” by William S. Pollack, “The Myth About Boys” by David Von Drehle, “Three Fathers” by Kevin Sweeney, “The Problem with Boys” by Tom Chiarella, “The Amazing Tale of the High School Quarterback Turned Lesbian Filmmaker” by Rick Moody; PT, p. 133-192
IN-CLASS: Reading discussion; Presentation sign-ups; Lecture—“Steps of the Writing Process, Pt. III”

UPCOMING:

Week 5

M 2.22
READ: CR—“Boys Get Cool Stuff, Girls Get Pink Stuff” by Kate Harding, “What Girls Want” by Caitlin Flanagan, “Auditorium” by Caroline Kettlewell, “Tight Jeans and Chania Chorris” by Sonia Shah, “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady, “Pushing Away the Plate” by Min Jin Lee; PT, p. 193-213; eR—“Testosterone” from This American Life
IN-CLASS: Reading discussion; Preview—Autobiographical essay
NOTE: Men only should attend this session.

W 2.24
READ: CR—“Boys Get Cool Stuff, Girls Get Pink Stuff” by Kate Harding, “What Girls Want” by Caitlin Flanagan, “Auditorium” by Caroline Kettlewell, “Tight Jeans and Chania Chorris” by Sonia Shah, “I Want a Wife” by Judy Brady, “Pushing Away the Plate” by Min Jin Lee; PT, p. 193-213; eR—“Testosterone” from This American Life
IN-CLASS: Reading discussion; Preview—Autobiographical essay
NOTE: Women only should attend this session.

In Search Of The Elusive Male Shopper

By Ashley Milne-Tyte, NPR
Feb. 13th, 2010

Valentine's Day weekend will see a lot of men doing something that still comes unnaturally to most: shopping. More men shop for everything from food to clothing than ever before. But marketing experts say stores could do a better job of persuading men to stay longer and spend more money.

If women can't decide which product to buy, they're usually happy to consult store staff. But that's not always the case with men. They'll typically read reams of product information before talking to a salesperson.

"Guys typically behave like they generally do — they don't like asking for directions," says Nelson Barber, a professor of hospitality management at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire. "They would rather get lost in a store or on a freeway than actually go up to somebody and say, 'You know, I'm really lost, I don't know what to buy. I need advice.' "

Barber, who studies shopping behavior, says he's a perfect example. He'd love to take up golf. But he says he'd need to spend hours researching the game before buying equipment. His pride won't let him just walk into a sporting goods store and start asking questions.

"Because I know in my heart — or at least that's what I believe — the guy or gal behind the counter or the clerk is gonna say to themselves, 'God this guy's an idiot, he doesn't know how to play golf?' "

Men, Women And Wine

Since Barber is a professor, he took a formal look at buying behavior by examining men, women and wine. He did a study recently that showed what you might expect: Men don't want to appear as if they don't know what they're talking about.

Jesse Salazar, the wine director at Union Square Wines and Spirits in New York City, says a telltale sign of a customer in need of assistance is one who looks around the store for eye contact. He says this overt signal comes most often from women, not men.

"I would say the last thing some of our male customers want to seem is sort of unknowledgable," Salazar says.

Still, Salazar tries to draw them out. He doesn't ask, "Can I help you?" because most guys will just say no. Instead, he asks open-ended questions about what they're looking for.

Making men feel at ease is critical for getting them to spend more time and money in stores, says Paco Underhill, the chief executive officer of Envirosell, a human behavior research firm. Traditionally men haven't lingered in retail locations.

"A man walked into the store, wanted to kill something reasonably quickly and drag it out the door," says Underhill. "The women tended to enjoy the act of looking."

The Elusive Night Shopper

Men may never be the browsers women are. But Underhill says retailers — including supermarkets — could do more to capitalize on men's particular shopping habits.

"A remarkable number of men shop in the grocery at night because they simply don't like the crowd," Underhill says. "And those are the times in which maybe you should have a beer tasting going on in-store."

Some stores are already working the alcohol angle. Mike Gatti, the executive director of the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, says several specialty clothing stores have thrown successful beer and pizza events to lure men in and keep them there.

What's On Tap

Then there's the jewelry chain that's meeting customers where they're already at ease: bars.

"Bringing some of the jewelry into local bars so the men can see the jewelry in a place where they're kind of hanging out with their friends, they might decide to buy a piece of jewelry for their girlfriend in this bar," Gatti says. "Also creates a bit of peer pressure: 'Hey, you need to buy that for her.' "

He says efforts like these will catch on. Meanwhile, a new kind of in-store help is on the horizon: touch-screen shelf signs. Shoppers will have pages of computerized product information at their fingertips. Men should love it. They won't need to ask any questions at all.