InsaneJournal

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I Went Looking For Heroes
First of all, I think Ten Inch Hero was a lesson in how my expectations of a movie can skew—or even make me miss—the point of a movie. This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, musing on how my (initial) viewing of Ugly Betty was deeply flawed because of the expectation that Bradford (and later, Alexis) would be redeemed and how my viewpoint on Mohinder Suresh (Heroes) altered simply by the alteration of my perception of whether he was intended to be a hero or not.

A lot of the time, when I watch something for the first time, I am watching (or trying to watch it) openly. I'm not watching it with an eye to picking my favorite character, or my favorite pairing, I'm not trying to focus on any one character (particularly if it's an ensemble piece) or any one plotline, waiting somewhat passively to see what the author-creator presents me with. That doesn't stop me from making snap judgments entirely—see the above examples of UB and Heroes—but I try to keep those judgments and my expectations to a minimum.

What I realized with TIH is that my theoretical openness changes when I am watching the media for a particular actor. I came into TIH specifically for Jensen (as did most of 'us', I guess) and, since it took me so long to finally get to watch the movie, I was pretty thoroughly spoiled about Jensen's plotline. This bias—and the spoilage—led me to make certain assumptions about the movie, including the fact that I assumed that Jensen was the A plotline.

I was pretty well into the movie when I realized that he really really wasn't and that, if anything, the movie was really All About The Women. The storyline with John Doe and Alice Krige is arguably the exception (and can I say what a difficult time I have seeing the Borg Queen as a romantic heroine?) …but one could counter argue that their story is also the woman's, as Zo (Krige) wanted—and cared about—Trucker (Doe) long before he knew she existed.

In any case, it was a little difficult for me to reframe my mind from All About Jensen to Hey, This is a Woman's Movie. And I had to change my perceptions of the movie and it's events to fit with that new paradigm.

My first issue with the movie is that it felt like they were really trying to cram several chick-flicks into one, and, as a result, didn't totally succeed with developing or telling any of them. Each story-line potentially had enough meat to it to be an entire movie and, in trying to tell them all, it took too many short-cuts with necessary narrative and sacrificed some of its clarity. I feel like the overall theme was kind of lost in the noise and didn't communicate as clearly—or resolutely—as it should have.

For all my love of Jensen, I think it was Piper (Elisabeth Harnois)'s story who I found the most intriguing and the most poignant. Of course, it's probably the one that speaks most to my kinks, given the age difference between Piper and Sean Patrick Flanery's character, Noah, but I also thought it was less hackneyed than Jen's "internet romance and self-esteem issues turns into true love" or Tish's "slut with a heart of gold finds true love right in front of her". I found it all the more interesting for the fact that Julia turned out to not be Piper's daughter and wish that more had been made of this story and the emotions behind it.

Piper's journey—being a teen mother and giving up her child as an act of love, the heartbreak she felt when contact was cut off by the adoptive parents, the huge leap of faith she took in crossing the country in hopes of finding and being close to her daughter, her developing relationship (and not even the romantic one) with Noah and Julia and the deception involved in it and then finding out Julia isn't hers and coming clean and the 'loss' of this second child…all that would have made a really excellent movie all on its own. Piper's search for wholeness seems to be a particularly heartbreaking one, and given the end result that Julia isn't hers, it makes her resolution to move forward into a new life with Noah and Julia all the more brave and touching. Also, of all the stories, it felt the most woman-positive, where the end goal wasn't her romance with Noah (though that was a pleasing side-effect, don't get me wrong) so much as it was finding and capturing a sense of family and self and learning to live with and settle the ghosts of the past.

I enjoyed Jen's story, though I felt it, too, was pressed for the time and space to fully express itself. On the other hand, it was a much more clichéd story and one where I, for one, never really had any doubt about the ending. So while I think it could've been developed more, the shortcut of cliché meant I didn't, per se, feel cheated by there not being more.

As I said above, I came into TIH spoiled and one of the thoughts that I'd seen in more than a few places was dissatisfaction that Priestly had to clean up (literally and metaphorically) to get the girl. But after viewing, I'm not sure that I agree with that plot assessment and though I understand how/why that conclusion can be drawn, I don't think it was intentional on the part of the movie-makers.

First of all, I wasn't crazy about Priestly. Yes, he looked hot (Jesus, did he look hot), but I don't have a lot of patience for the guys who lust from the sidelines and make nasty comments when they don't have the nerve to go after what they want. Shit or get off the pot, man. Pine in silence or go for it and face potential rejection. But the wise-cracking and snide commentary was just ugly, male sour-grapes and it wasn't attractive. This opinion is definitely a by-product of age, I'm sure, given how deeply I loved Duckie from Pretty in Pink when I was younger and dumber, but there it is. I'm just not so down with the Nice Guy Syndrome anymore. For one thing, it's not nice. Second of all—and this is probably a little unfair—I didn't like Tish and therefore, I thought less of Priestly for lusting after this girl so hard that he was willing to change his whole persona for the prospect of snagging her.

I wanted to like Tish. I really did. I wanted to like the sex-positive girl. I am most heartily tired of the idea/trope that promiscuity (or, really, NON-VIRGINITY/non-abstinence) is the hallmark of deep, deep damage and that something with the woman is Wrong for liking and pursuing sexual relationships that don't lead to True Love and Marriage. Given that the movie was written by a woman and was, in essence, a woman's movie, I wanted TIH to sidestep that cliché and make Tish an awesome, sex-powerful woman. *sighs*

But they didn't do that. Instead, they pair Tish up with a series of clueless assholes, show her as too hesitant/meek/afraid to stand up to said assholes for her friends, too willing to put up with their crap (though I was heartily relieved when, after the threesome fiasco, she did state unequivocally that she wasn't remaining with Tadd, but really Tish, really), too swayed by a pretty face (and really, I would SO take Priestly over Tadd ANY FREAKING DAY) to recognize what a raging asshole Tadd was, etc.

Further, because of all the plot they were trying to cram into the film, this is the only view we have of Tish. We don't see her having hobbies or interests or doing much of anything, outside of boinking Tadd the Asshole. She has no personality or dimensionality outside of her vagina and, wow, but I really didn't like that. I think all the characters somewhat suffered from a lack of character development, but I think that lack of development was most damaging to Tish's character, given how very shallow the view of her is, that we are given.

And, again, it made me think less of Priestly for wanting her so bad, when there was so much more awesomeness around him. If they'd given her some actual dimensionality then I could've hand-waved it as Priestly seeing through her flirty-girl glamour to the hidden Deep Girl underneath, but they didn't GIVE us an underneath. And that makes Priestly, in his way, just as bad as every other Guy^TM out there, burning hot for a pretty face and perky fake boobs. (For the record, I have no particular hate-on for Danneel Harris or fake boobs; this is actually the first thing I've ever seen Danneel in and I still don't have a particular opinion about her.)

I also might have been able to hand-wave it better if they'd taken the time to build more of a relationship between Priestly and Tish. Pretty in Pink at least had liberal Andie-Duckie interaction to show the affection and affinity they had for each other, whereas the greatest "interaction" Tish and Priestly had was the tampon conversation on the phone. Otherwise, they only ever even spoke to each other in group situations, where there wasn't any particular intimacy or chemistry.

I also really deeply disliked the fact that the movie preached a "look beneath the surface" message in Jen's case—and to some extent, even with the ethereal Zo and Trucker's hidden past—and then immediately and often counteracted that by criticizing Priestly for being a "freak" at every occasion. The message—that it's okay to be 'ugly' (and I don't really want to argue about Clea DuVall's attractiveness), or lie, or sleep around or whatever else you wanna do…but that dyeing your hair, having piercings and dressing quirkily is an unforgiveable—or completely undesirable, at least—trait.

Now. On the one hand, Tish never asked Priestly to change. She never put that as a condition on dating him. That was something Priestly decided to do on his own (and in my head, I want to believe that Tish tells him to change back if that's what makes him happy) and so, in that sense, I don't feel like the movie was intending to give a message of "if you want true love, you have to change", especially given message/moral behind the other story-lines. OTOH, I feel like it's almost inevitable that that's what the watcher would conclude, given how it all played out and the clear disdain for Priestly as written before his transformation.

The Wikipedia entry for TIH suggests that Priestly isn't comfortable in his own skin and therefore his transformation is an act of 'honesty', but I don't see enough in the text to support that position. Like many of the characters Jensen plays, I think Priestly covers his native insecurity with bravado, but I never got the impression that it was his self or his appearance to the world that he was insecure about so much as it was his desirability (a not unreasonable fear for the best of us), particularly to Tish.

Obviously, I can't know what was in Betsy Morris's mind when she wrote TIH or what changes might have been made in the production process, but if that is the stated position behind Priestly, then the movie really fails in expressing that and shouldn't have tied his transformation so closely to the wooing and winning of Tish.

Whereas if the movie's message was (as stated in the Wiki entry): "Don't let others tell you what your book's cover should look like." Each of the friends learns that you can't be happy until you're willing to risk being yourself., then Priestly's change should have been motivated by something he wanted to do, outside of Tish's shown preference for clean-cut guys. Instead, it feels (to me and to many of the people whose reviews I read) that Priestly is being and becoming less honest, willing to perjure his self and his identity for a piece of ass true love. And, in the end, given that they are both depicted to be such shallow people, I actually kind of thought they deserved each other.

(OMG, Jensen needs some better roles!)

So on the one hand, the movie was fairly cute, entertaining and easy on the eyes. It didn't challenge my thinking or my world view…but it didn't have to. On the moon hand, I did have some serious issues with the movie, as written. I feel like Morris didn't think through what she was writing or how she was presenting it to her audience. And I feel like she really overstepped herself by trying to do too much.

If it had given me a better movie, I would've settled for the six-inch. *g*


In other news, wrenlet wrote some AWESOME Virginal!Reid (Criminal Minds) with Naturally Occurring Phenomenon and mickeym wrote some "kink I didn't know I had" mpreg lactation (no, seriously, READ IT) fic with Undeniable Affirmation, which is set in my The Killing Moon universe. Both are DEEPLY hot and deeply satisfying, in completely different ways. I recommend them both!