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Do you in anyway connect with Renee Zellweger?
How could any thinking woman relate to Renee Zellweger? Let's do
a tour of her roles: chick who takes job for guy, chick in hot pants,
chick who puts up with Tarzan creator, oppressed Hasidic chick.
Am I missing anything? Oh, yeah, she was that hard-bitten journalist
in that one dead mom show! You know, the one where she figures out
what really matters through taking care of her drunken dad and doing
arts and crafts. PLEASE.
Sure, it helps that she's a little bit Meg Ryanish. She's cutesy,
and a little scatty, but you know what? That doesn't matter anymore.
We don't want/don't need/don't buy that When Sleepless Harry
Got Mail And Forgot Paris bullshit. Maybe our moms or older
sisters or people with whom we went to high school, but not the
people I think of as US.
I'm willing to admit that I'm a shitty representative of my gender,
but I AM a girl, and I know that women are, by and large, getting
more and more pissed off and confused all the time. We have neither
the time nor the patience to even consider being as passive as ANY
of the characters Zellwegers played. Sure, we're under a lot of
pressure to listen to, follow, be big wimps for MEN-and movies where
women do all this submissive crap AND JUST EAT IT UP don't help
our cases all that much. I'm no cinema brain. I go to movies for
escapism. Where's the escapism in watching a woman who only seems
to have value when she "completes" a SPORTS AGENT?
Sorry, I have to hear that sort of stupid Cosmo shit in real life.
I don't need to ride 2 buses, pay $8.75, and fight tourists who
don't know the "left side of the escalator is for passing rule"
to see it.
See, that's why Julia Roberts works for us-she's a bitch, and she
still gets her way. Sure, we all have political issues with Pretty
Woman, but, hey, she wasn't going to settle for living with
her John, she got her fairy tale. Remember that total screaming
bitch out she gave Hugh Grant in Notting Hill? She could
get totally shitty, lose her temper and all that, and Hugh still
falls all over her. Now THAT'S a rock and roll fantasy.
As women grow more and more frustrated when they realize things
aren't progressing the way we'd been told they would, the less and
less use we have for the spineless bitches Zellwegers has made a
"career" of playing. We want to see women who stand up for themselves
and somehow manage (and this is the magic of the movies, folks)
not to end up hated and dumped and consulting the Magic 8-Ball every
15 minutes. We want Trinity, but we want her to get better kisses
than that weak- ass one from Ted. We want someone we haven't seen
yet. But I know she's out there.
Sure, there's still a little time left for the wimpy-woman-who-says-
the-sort-of-things-men-love-to-hear (Ally McBeal, I'm looking at
your scrawny ass), and no one's going to be losing any money on
anti-feminist romantic comedies any time in the near future, but
the clock is ticking, folks. We're getting cranky, and Renee Zellweger
is not the solution.
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Do you in anyway connect with Renee Zellweger?
uhhhhhhh, NO! I see what the studios are going for though. She's
a twenty-something woman, I'm a twenty-something woman. Somehow
I'm supposed to either relate to her or at least want to be like
her. I'm not biting. I don't even like that kind of bait. It's a
silly question to ask someone like me who's not going to fit into
any Hollywood notion of modern women.
If you find a woman whose best memory from high school is winning
the regional cheerleading championships, whose college sorority
was "like, a totally awesome experience," and who will 'oh my gawd,
like, DIE, if I'm not married before thirty', then you got your
fish to bite down hard on the shiny Renee Zellweger lure. The rest
of us will swim around unfooled and unamused, with our appetites
gone and our cynical eyes jaded from years of looking at women with
whom we have nothing in common. Throw us some more Janeane Garafalo,
Christina Ricci, and Lili Taylor and maybe we'll start eating again.
Oops, I forgot. According to Hollywood, men couldn't possibly find
a woman with a less than perfect face and attractive body even if
she's intelligent, independent, and plays characters who don't need
a man to "complete them". For you guys out there that
aren't buying what Hollywood says is the perfect woman for you,
cheers for thinking with the head that's on top of your neck. Let
your voices be heard. You can get my phone number from Monkey Boy,
who's staring at his new Asia Argento poster as you read this.
The most important thing about Renee Zellweger is that she looks
too much like Jewel for anybody's good, least of all hers. Is she
Everywoman? Is she the chick flick chick? Is she the next woman's
woman? Well, if Mighty Hollywood says she is, than she is, isn't
she? Do I connect with her? Not really. I myself prefer female characters
with too much personality and a few habits which would drive you
nuts after a while–i.e. realistic characters. Every role she's
played that I've seen is not too feisty, not too striking, not too
beautiful, not too ugly, doesn't seem Too Smart For Her Own Good
but comes off like she can operate an ATM machine without too much
trouble.
Her roles that I've seen are the epitome of non-threatening mediocrity.
If that's what Hollywood sees as Everywoman, if that's what Hollywood
wants me to connect with, then screw Hollywood. I'll watch old Katherine
Hepburn movies. Renee's okay, she just is, which as a character
trait 95% of the time just tires me. Mostly, I feel extreme pity
that she got stuck looking so much like Jewel.
It's weird, you know it is.
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