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Christmas Movies Don’t Have to Be a Saccharine Drizzle-Fest of Patriarchy
So Why Are They?
Since I live alone and we’ve enjoyed a rainy, thirty-seven degrees for days — in Albuquerque — I broke down and began searching for a romantic Christmas movie. (Something to pass the time until I see the sun again, I hoped.) But, despite an extensive search, there’s obviously a severe shortage of enjoyable, relatable, semi-intelligent Christmas movies available. Yikes! I don’t write these kinds of characters, or plots, with ridiculously boring and overused tropes. How do movies like this get made?
For starters, I find it insulting to watch a movie that begins by showing us a hopelessly incapable, female character who can do literally NOTHING without the help of a strapping male. Which gender does most of the work to bring the Christmas holiday to life, I ask you? I think we all know the answer.
My second quibble — why do so many female Christmas movie holiday characters discover that a) they’ve been ripped off by an unscrupulous business manager, b) their partner is cheating on them, or c), they’re about to be dropped by their record label? (And, repeat.) Sparkly female characters who are weak, creatively challenged, and incapable of putting up a simple Christmas tree are completely unrealistic. (As far as I can tell, none of them appeared…
