{"id":81465,"date":"2022-04-07T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81465"},"modified":"2022-04-07T06:33:12","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T11:33:12","slug":"81465","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81465","title":{"rendered":"The Invisible Man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

SCENE: A suburban family room. MOTHER and FATHER are anxiously looking at their SON, who’s watching…TV. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOTHER: It’s all he’s watching lately. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FATHER: What is it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOTHER: <\/em>He’s binging Band of Brothers <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FATHER: Again? This is like the third time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOTHER: And before that, it was 13 Hours<\/em>. And then Taken<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FATHER: I caught him watching Die Hard<\/em> the other day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

MOTHER: He has the scene of him rescuing his wife from being pulled out the window with Hans Gruber as his social media avatar. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

FATHER: God. I wonder what’s going on with him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

So I started binge watching \u201cThe Flight Attendant\u201d last night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pros:<\/strong> it\u2019s really well written. That\u2019s nothing to sneeze at. I\u2019ve been terribly disappointed by the writing in a lot of things I\u2019ve seen lately (I’m looking at you, Love Life<\/em>, whose laziness completely wasted Anna Kendrick).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The writers toss out a completely un-subtle \u201cCrime and Punishment\u201c reference in the first couple minutes, and then go on to deliver on it throughout everything I\u2019ve seen so far (#StuffEnglishMajorsLike). And Kaley Cuoco makes a completely believable protagonist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bonus pro: it’s got Rosie Perez, who may be the most underrated actress of her generation (although she’s just a tad underutilized in the first couple episodes). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not Dial M for Murder<\/em>, much less Gaslight<\/em>, but it ain’t bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking of that Ingrid Bergman \/ Charles Boyer classic…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cons<\/strong>: These aren’t all in re Flight Attendant<\/em> alone – far from it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hollywood writers seemed to have gotten together and signed a weird, junior high quality pact amongst themselves: \u201cFor decades, we wrote women as one dimensional caricatures; madonnas, whores, bimbos and housewives. Let\u2019s pack a century of retribution into a couple of years worth of television and movies.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently, women can be protagonists, or nuanced, complex characters, or turbocharged badasses, for good or evil – or at least not incompetent caricatures. \ufffc That\u2019s a good thing.\ufffc<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, rules for men of these days seem to be boiled down to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  • Gay besties<\/li>
  • stock black, Asian, Latino or Semitic guys<\/li>
  • The villain (usually an older white guy, usually played with all the subtlety of a mustache-twisting melodrama villain, although occasionally a white woman)
    – The love interest \u2013 who is usually safely ethnically ambiguous.<\/li>
  • pathetic, beaten down sacks<\/li>
  • Buffoons, tools, frat bros (apparently all white anglo-saxon protestant males get lacrosse scholarships. I didn\u2019t know that), frat bros that have grown up to be buffoons and tools, clich\u00e9 rednecks and every kind of cad ever offered up by central casting.. Almost inevitably white, although I guess it\u2019s a sign of evolution the screen writers are showing the occasional less than bright\/moral\/ethical black male character.<\/li>
  • Part of a married couple – usually as a hapless schlub whose league his spouse is waaay out of, but with plenty of dysfunctional, abusive cads thrown in. (Same sex couples apparently are immune to most serious dysfunction in Hollywood. Who knew?)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Patronizing? I think so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Virtue signaling? Sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \ufffc Lazy? Completely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Gaslighting? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\n\n\n

    FATHER: Junior? Why are you watching all these…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    MOTHER: …movies and TV shows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    SON: Because it’s fun, for a change, for the first time in my life, to see people like I am, or plan to become, not portrayed as idiots, buffoons, fools, blackguards and expendable simps?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    MOTHER: (sotto voce, to FATHER<\/em>). Do. you think we should call a therapist?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    SCENE: A suburban family room. MOTHER and FATHER are anxiously looking at their SON, who’s watching…TV. MOTHER: It’s all he’s watching lately. . FATHER: What is it? MOTHER: He’s binging Band of Brothers FATHER: Again? This is like the third time. MOTHER: And before that, it was 13 Hours. And then Taken. FATHER: I caught […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,24,27,421],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-n-e","category-culture-war","category-men-and-women","category-snappy-answers-to-casual-gaslighting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81465","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=81465"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81476,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81465\/revisions\/81476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}