I've just realised so many Christmas films read off the male script. It wasn't really until I had to write about favourite Christmas films and had to analyse them in more depth I realised, everything centres around the male protagonist. The woman is something to be rescued, or is by default, an object where things happen to her. My favourite film Chitty Chatty Bang Bang has a rather gormless (admittedly ok dancer) male protagonist, hapless, and meeting Truly Scrumptious who is made happy just by being loved by this 'lovely lonely' man.
Then there's Home Alone, where the protagonist is again male, the mother has to go back and is the guilt ridden one, the father literally the absent one looking after the rest admittedly in rainy Miami and for Home Alone 2, Paris. Nothing about the boy being irresponsible or probably possibly enjoying being by himself. If I was the mother I would let the father take the lot of them away and take time for myself. Go travel to Japan, perhaps take one child, the favourite and leave the rest behind. They all seem very over indulged and petulant any way, and that older brother. Ugh. But I suppose if you have that many children, you enjoy the company. Is it only me who finds that uncle really annoying?
Then there's Die Hard, which again is around a man, who rescues the day, from another man, and the woman is saved, although admittedly she does have a career and a maid called Marlana (is it Marlena?) beings with M
Elf is male, It's a Wonderful Life, its about a male who messes up and then is redeemed by another (male) angel, ditto The Bishop's Wife, which is about a male vicar rescued by a male angel although the title of the film is about the woman but only in the role of a wife, so basically its still about the man she's married to. She only has purpose because she happens to be married to the vicar and flirted with by the angel.
But probably the most chauvinist is Scrooge, where it's' all about him, his past, present and future, where he is fixed and redeemed. Having just spent the last seven years writing a biography of a man, who had a host of women looking after him, following after him, I have felt a bit like trawling through his life like a ghost observing the scenarios in his past from various perspectives, including his own like a Who done it/who did it psychological murder mystery. The women in his life have been merely buffers he brushed up against like a ball on a pinball machine, aiming for the jackpot, in order to fulfil his goal. He accomplished a lot but again without them, he could not have achieved what he did, but they are the B listers, the bit part players, paragraphs or one liners, who are happy, sad, angry at having met him.
I feel the narratives of women in life reflect the narratives in the things we watch. It's just that women don't have enough female narratives. Even the super heroes who are women have more camera angles on their bums and boobs than they do on their (stunning cheekbones) face. And this starts at school. Get women to earn more than men. To have that financial freedom. Then the narratives will change and Scrooges ghosts won't bother turning up. Least of all to fix a tight fisted old money lender.
