{"id":72934,"date":"2019-12-31T11:00:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-31T17:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=72934"},"modified":"2020-07-24T11:51:05","modified_gmt":"2020-07-24T16:51:05","slug":"little-straw-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=72934","title":{"rendered":"Little Straw Men"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A few weeks ago, I saw the new film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott \u201cLittle Women\u201c. I\u2019m told there are seven different versions on film out there \u2013 I\u2019ve only seen parts of the 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn, and of course the 1994 version with Winona Ryder (of which the less said, the better).<\/p>\n<p>I liked it. A lot. Yes, it\u2019s a\u201cChick flick\u201c, and I don\u2019t care, because all I really care about is \u201cis it a good movie\u201c.<\/p>\n<p>Around the same time, I saw a new statistic; a solid majorit<span class=\"text_exposed_show\">y of doctors under the age of 35 or women.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"text_exposed_show\">\n<p>That\u2019s after a couple of decades in which the share of undergraduate degrees going to women has reached three out of five, on its way to an estimated two out of three in the next decade or two. This, as the education system becomes more and more dogmatically feminized, with the attendant treating of \u201cboyhood\u201c as a pathology to be medicated into submission , and as the media seems to be incapable of showing males above a certain age as anything but loutish buffoons.\ufffc\ufffc\ufffc\ufffc\ufffc<\/p>\n<p>So I could see, perhaps, men staying home from yet another film that shows men as expendable cads (which, by the way, \u201cLittle Women\u201c doesn\u2019t); \ufffc\ufffcIt\u2019s not like men don\u2019t get a steady diet of that anyway.<\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s an experiment for you: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/12\/27\/opinion\/little-women-movie.html?fbclid=IwAR1T4f4lsxiqnrFbLpNPKhfLiJJPBMkb3M_EzfrqxRsEdEWIWC2HQ-44sUA\">read this article &#8211; not a review &#8211; from the utterly underwhelming Kristy Eldridge<\/a>\u00a0 whom the <em>Times <\/em>helpfully notes, is &#8220;a writer&#8221;, entitled &#8220;Men are Dismissing \u201cLittle Women\u201c\u201c\ufffc. The article points out that the movie finished third in its opening week, behind two tent post blockbusters (Star Wars and the new Jumanji)\ufffc\ufffc, and throws in a lot of pro forma \u201cmen just don\u2019t care about female writers\/artists\/films\u201c whingeing.<\/p>\n<p>One thing it doesn\u2019t do is quote any men who don\u2019t actually like the movie, or show any demographic evidence that men are shunning it any more (or less) than any other \u201cchick flick\u201c. Given that the film\ufffc\ufffc would seem to be at least a modest success (especially compared to the boat anchor 1994 version, which played like a high school production)\ufffc, that\u2019d seem to be a little impossible if all those female viewers weren\u2019t hauling their boyfriends\/husbands along with.<\/p>\n<p>The article promises male rage. It delivers Little Straw Men.<\/p>\n<p>I have to suspect the article was written long before the movie opened<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few weeks ago, I saw the new film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott \u201cLittle Women\u201c. I\u2019m told there are seven different versions on film out there \u2013 I\u2019ve only seen parts of the 1933 version with Katherine Hepburn, and of course the 1994 version with Winona Ryder (of which the less said, the better). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,24,297,295,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-culture-war","category-favorites-culture","category-favorites-media","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72934"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72934\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72954,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72934\/revisions\/72954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}