Girl Power
I watched the director’s commentary on Starship Troopers last night. Mostly, it was for humour value because my friend Fahad had heard the director Paul Verhoeven gets really excited during the commentary like an old lady at a bingo game.
Anyhow, there were a few repeated themes. One of which had me thinking more than I thought. They talked about how audiences screened -everywhere- (including international screenings) did not like Denise Richard’s character Carmen.
Quick refresher of romance subplot of Starship: Carmen and Johnny are dating. Dizzy likes Johnny. Johnny flirts slightly but doesn’t reciprocate. Xander likes Carmen. Carmen flirts with Xander as well and probably likes him, too. Johnny joins military for Carmen. Carmen dumps Johnny while he’s in military, sorta/almost hooks up with Xander in air force. Johnny hooks up with Dizzy. Dizzy dies. Xander dies. Carmen is back with Johnny.
So it turns out everyone wants Carmen to die. They don’t like that she dumped the hero. They don’t like that she liked two guys at the same time. Somebody said on the opinion card, “the slut should have died”. Yet, Johnny liked two girls (admittedly, not as blatantly split, he did like Carmen more) but seemed to do no wrong.
So I seem to see myself in similar situations more and more. I mean, there’s always the threat of giant bug aliens, and I’m thinking about militar — no … really, the situation I’m talking about is: women who like two guys and can’t decide.
There’s all sorts of things to look into. The gender discrimination where guys seem to have more freedom to “shop”, the fact that people always seem to be on the look out for something better than what they have, the question of how long you can sit on the fence … blah blah blah.
I’m just venting … because really, girls have a lot more power to do the whole “liking more than one guy” because guys tend to be stupid and wait, and guys generally don’t have “suitors” or whatever you call it.
Point? None really … Girl Power.
