“When Harry Met Sally’s diner scene giddily busted the omertà around men’s sexual incompetence and the way women cosset men’s egos;” – as a man I find this sentence pretty insulting. I wonder if UnHerd would have been happy with a similar sentence with with the genders switched? No of course they wouldn’t.
Basic gender differences at play here. Men are not bothered in the main what women or men think of them and women are not bothered in the main what men think of them. Women are intensely interested however, in what other women think of them. This is the ego in action in humans. Try as a woman telling another woman unfairly ( perceived unfairly) that ……. about her is ……. ( insert negative comment). It doesn’t happen very often because that is effectively, a declaration of war…..
Like elephants they never forget…
Quentin Crisp said women dress to annoy other women , so I suppose he would agree with you. Ephron managed to find a successful commercial niche which was nice for her , but I don’t think it has much to do with her actual life, as any script changes after numerous re-writes and re-casting.
Benedict Waterson
2 years ago
Article (inadvertently) sums up everything that’s wrong with modern feminism. Self-obsessed, comprised of a shifting network of buzz-phrases & not much else, prone to making sweeping generalizations about ‘men’ or ‘women’, overly focused on silly pop cultural fashions and references, unreflective, & stupid.
Modern feminism seems to exist solely to give female writers a simplistic frame of reference which they can use to write stupid articles on the internet
The only people, in the ‘west’, who are genuinely bringing women’s rights into some sort of peril/ conflict, seem to be other Feminists!
ralph bell
2 years ago
Films that really brought people together, unlike todays divisive moralising.
People can be best inspired by people/Actors they can relate to.
I will agree with that. Once film was made to enlighten, educate, show historical events, show nobility, heroic deeds, show devotion, uplift, to make people happy and entertained, they were for enjoying.. (As O Wilde said – ‘the good are rewarded, the bad punished, that is the meaning of ‘Fiction’)
Now 95% of everything is either Degenerate, Depraved, or to undermine History and truth and decency. Demons, vampires, returned from the dead, Sadism, Cruelty, unwholesome sex, Gratuitous violence, meanness of spirit, and degenerate words and deeds, Wokeisms to mislead and politically bias to warp thinking, this is modern ‘Entertainment’.
The film industry is quite cynical-it makes films that win awards that noone goes to & the blockbusters which finance the former.Neither seem to be made with much style.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
So in Unherd the men write badly about Palestine rocketing Israel and bloodshed and politics, and the women write well about ‘When Harry Met Sally’ hmmmm.
Sorry about that low shot… But I would really like articles on Simone Weil, or Gertrude Bell, even Joan Didon kind of figures. (and with Didon you get to squeeze in the Yeats line, and what is more fitting today?)
I know right, what could be less worthy than than an assessment of how a woman shaped popular culture and a genre of entertainment that mostly women consume and unconsciously absorb ideas about love, agency and romance? Yawn.
Why can’t she write about the kinds of women men think important enough to read about at university?
Sorry, and to the writer too. She should write on women’s popular topics as women want those articles, that they are utterly unfathomable to me means I should not comment as I just do not get it.
There was an Indian movie years ago where this concept was made clear to me: At some family meal one of the young people walks in dressed in (say orange, a long time ago) Orange robes and the family all recoil with a gasp – it meant a greatly significant deal to everyone, but we Western Audience were never told why.
This is like watching a Ron-Com, I just do not get it, I see them in their orange robes but it has no meaning to me.
Now give me Patton leading the army to relieve Bastogne, or Lawrence cresting the Sand rise with his army of Bedu and I get it totally, I want to watch that.
Men and women, its like they are different species.
You don’t have to stick to the topic you know? However it is a skill to beable to write successfully for a market-it means you have tapped into something. As you liked Midnight Folk have you read the follow up Box of Delights? You might also enjoy Wilkie Collin’s Moonstone-all these are well written & thoughtful & popular books
You don’t have to stick to the topic you know? However it is a skill to beable to write successfully for a market-it means you have tapped into something. As you liked Midnight Folk have you read the follow up Box of Delights? You might also enjoy Wilkie Collin’s Moonstone-all these are well written & thoughtful & popular books
Sorry, and to the writer too. She should write on women’s popular topics as women want those articles, that they are utterly unfathomable to me means I should not comment as I just do not get it.
There was an Indian movie years ago where this concept was made clear to me: At some family meal one of the young people walks in dressed in (say orange, a long time ago) Orange robes and the family all recoil with a gasp – it meant a greatly significant deal to everyone, but we Western Audience were never told why.
This is like watching a Ron-Com, I just do not get it, I see them in their orange robes but it has no meaning to me.
Now give me Patton leading the army to relieve Bastogne, or Lawrence cresting the Sand rise with his army of Bedu and I get it totally, I want to watch that.
Men and women, its like they are different species.
I was going to say not entirely true, Mary Harrington writes about serious stuff. But then I remembered tat actually she and Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill ALL basically write about sex and women’s issues most of the time. You are right.
One problem with labelling something as women’s issues is that its agenda has to be women’s oppression by men. If you look at popular entertainment , for example Murder She Wrote , Reminton Steele, Hart to Hart this isn’t the world they show at all. What they do have in common is that successful women usually come from the same class as successful men.Obviously this minor inconvenience must be ignored in order to continue with their agenda. In the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy films such as Adam’s Rib (1949) & Pat and Mike(1952) both have successful careers. Both films were written by the team of Ruth Gordon/Garson Kanin.However if BBC show a documentary about the 1950’s apparently all women were forced to stay at home & do the cooking and cleaning by their husbands, no careers allowed.
What you say is true. I would add that the documentary would suggest that the men had independence in their jobs. But most jobs then – as indeed most jobs do now – involve taking orders from one’s boss(es). Managerial and professional vocations are still relatively rare, but they’re the ones that get a disproportionate share of the leading characters on the popular entertainment you cite.
What you say is true. I would add that the documentary would suggest that the men had independence in their jobs. But most jobs then – as indeed most jobs do now – involve taking orders from one’s boss(es). Managerial and professional vocations are still relatively rare, but they’re the ones that get a disproportionate share of the leading characters on the popular entertainment you cite.
One problem with labelling something as women’s issues is that its agenda has to be women’s oppression by men. If you look at popular entertainment , for example Murder She Wrote , Reminton Steele, Hart to Hart this isn’t the world they show at all. What they do have in common is that successful women usually come from the same class as successful men.Obviously this minor inconvenience must be ignored in order to continue with their agenda. In the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy films such as Adam’s Rib (1949) & Pat and Mike(1952) both have successful careers. Both films were written by the team of Ruth Gordon/Garson Kanin.However if BBC show a documentary about the 1950’s apparently all women were forced to stay at home & do the cooking and cleaning by their husbands, no careers allowed.
I know right, what could be less worthy than than an assessment of how a woman shaped popular culture and a genre of entertainment that mostly women consume and unconsciously absorb ideas about love, agency and romance? Yawn.
Why can’t she write about the kinds of women men think important enough to read about at university?
I was going to say not entirely true, Mary Harrington writes about serious stuff. But then I remembered tat actually she and Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill ALL basically write about sex and women’s issues most of the time. You are right.
Galeti Tavas
2 years ago
So in Unherd the men write badly about Palestine rocketing Israel and bloodshed and politics, and the women write well about ‘When Harry Met Sally’ hmmmm.
Sorry about that low shot… But I would really like articles on Simone Weil, or Gertrude Bell, even Joan Didon kind of figures. (and with Didon you get to squeeze in the Yeats line, and what is more fitting today?)
Neil Pennington
2 years ago
Good article: enjoyed watching her films very much, sleepless in Seattle being my favourite.
“When Harry Met Sally’s diner scene giddily busted the omertà around men’s sexual incompetence and the way women cosset men’s egos;” – as a man I find this sentence pretty insulting. I wonder if UnHerd would have been happy with a similar sentence with with the genders switched? No of course they wouldn’t.
Basic gender differences at play here. Men are not bothered in the main what women or men think of them and women are not bothered in the main what men think of them. Women are intensely interested however, in what other women think of them. This is the ego in action in humans. Try as a woman telling another woman unfairly ( perceived unfairly) that ……. about her is ……. ( insert negative comment). It doesn’t happen very often because that is effectively, a declaration of war…..
Like elephants they never forget…
Quentin Crisp said women dress to annoy other women , so I suppose he would agree with you. Ephron managed to find a successful commercial niche which was nice for her , but I don’t think it has much to do with her actual life, as any script changes after numerous re-writes and re-casting.
Article (inadvertently) sums up everything that’s wrong with modern feminism. Self-obsessed, comprised of a shifting network of buzz-phrases & not much else, prone to making sweeping generalizations about ‘men’ or ‘women’, overly focused on silly pop cultural fashions and references, unreflective, & stupid.
Modern feminism seems to exist solely to give female writers a simplistic frame of reference which they can use to write stupid articles on the internet
The only people, in the ‘west’, who are genuinely bringing women’s rights into some sort of peril/ conflict, seem to be other Feminists!
Films that really brought people together, unlike todays divisive moralising.
People can be best inspired by people/Actors they can relate to.
“Actors they can relate to.” – has there ever been such a thing
I will agree with that. Once film was made to enlighten, educate, show historical events, show nobility, heroic deeds, show devotion, uplift, to make people happy and entertained, they were for enjoying.. (As O Wilde said – ‘the good are rewarded, the bad punished, that is the meaning of ‘Fiction’)
Now 95% of everything is either Degenerate, Depraved, or to undermine History and truth and decency. Demons, vampires, returned from the dead, Sadism, Cruelty, unwholesome sex, Gratuitous violence, meanness of spirit, and degenerate words and deeds, Wokeisms to mislead and politically bias to warp thinking, this is modern ‘Entertainment’.
The film industry is quite cynical-it makes films that win awards that noone goes to & the blockbusters which finance the former.Neither seem to be made with much style.
So in Unherd the men write badly about Palestine rocketing Israel and bloodshed and politics, and the women write well about ‘When Harry Met Sally’ hmmmm.
Sorry about that low shot… But I would really like articles on Simone Weil, or Gertrude Bell, even Joan Didon kind of figures. (and with Didon you get to squeeze in the Yeats line, and what is more fitting today?)
I know right, what could be less worthy than than an assessment of how a woman shaped popular culture and a genre of entertainment that mostly women consume and unconsciously absorb ideas about love, agency and romance? Yawn.
Why can’t she write about the kinds of women men think important enough to read about at university?
Sorry, and to the writer too. She should write on women’s popular topics as women want those articles, that they are utterly unfathomable to me means I should not comment as I just do not get it.
There was an Indian movie years ago where this concept was made clear to me: At some family meal one of the young people walks in dressed in (say orange, a long time ago) Orange robes and the family all recoil with a gasp – it meant a greatly significant deal to everyone, but we Western Audience were never told why.
This is like watching a Ron-Com, I just do not get it, I see them in their orange robes but it has no meaning to me.
Now give me Patton leading the army to relieve Bastogne, or Lawrence cresting the Sand rise with his army of Bedu and I get it totally, I want to watch that.
Men and women, its like they are different species.
You don’t have to stick to the topic you know? However it is a skill to beable to write successfully for a market-it means you have tapped into something. As you liked Midnight Folk have you read the follow up Box of Delights? You might also enjoy Wilkie Collin’s Moonstone-all these are well written & thoughtful & popular books
You don’t have to stick to the topic you know? However it is a skill to beable to write successfully for a market-it means you have tapped into something. As you liked Midnight Folk have you read the follow up Box of Delights? You might also enjoy Wilkie Collin’s Moonstone-all these are well written & thoughtful & popular books
Sorry, and to the writer too. She should write on women’s popular topics as women want those articles, that they are utterly unfathomable to me means I should not comment as I just do not get it.
There was an Indian movie years ago where this concept was made clear to me: At some family meal one of the young people walks in dressed in (say orange, a long time ago) Orange robes and the family all recoil with a gasp – it meant a greatly significant deal to everyone, but we Western Audience were never told why.
This is like watching a Ron-Com, I just do not get it, I see them in their orange robes but it has no meaning to me.
Now give me Patton leading the army to relieve Bastogne, or Lawrence cresting the Sand rise with his army of Bedu and I get it totally, I want to watch that.
Men and women, its like they are different species.
I was going to say not entirely true, Mary Harrington writes about serious stuff. But then I remembered tat actually she and Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill ALL basically write about sex and women’s issues most of the time. You are right.
I think it’s fair to say that Julie Birchill and Mary Harrington write on subjects that go way beyond ‘women’s issues’.
One problem with labelling something as women’s issues is that its agenda has to be women’s oppression by men. If you look at popular entertainment , for example Murder She Wrote , Reminton Steele, Hart to Hart this isn’t the world they show at all. What they do have in common is that successful women usually come from the same class as successful men.Obviously this minor inconvenience must be ignored in order to continue with their agenda. In the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy films such as Adam’s Rib (1949) & Pat and Mike(1952) both have successful careers. Both films were written by the team of Ruth Gordon/Garson Kanin.However if BBC show a documentary about the 1950’s apparently all women were forced to stay at home & do the cooking and cleaning by their husbands, no careers allowed.
What you say is true. I would add that the documentary would suggest that the men had independence in their jobs. But most jobs then – as indeed most jobs do now – involve taking orders from one’s boss(es). Managerial and professional vocations are still relatively rare, but they’re the ones that get a disproportionate share of the leading characters on the popular entertainment you cite.
What you say is true. I would add that the documentary would suggest that the men had independence in their jobs. But most jobs then – as indeed most jobs do now – involve taking orders from one’s boss(es). Managerial and professional vocations are still relatively rare, but they’re the ones that get a disproportionate share of the leading characters on the popular entertainment you cite.
Mary Harrington is a good writer. Intelligent & reflective. Other writers on ‘Women’s Issues’ , not so much — even on UnHerd, which is generally good
One problem with labelling something as women’s issues is that its agenda has to be women’s oppression by men. If you look at popular entertainment , for example Murder She Wrote , Reminton Steele, Hart to Hart this isn’t the world they show at all. What they do have in common is that successful women usually come from the same class as successful men.Obviously this minor inconvenience must be ignored in order to continue with their agenda. In the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy films such as Adam’s Rib (1949) & Pat and Mike(1952) both have successful careers. Both films were written by the team of Ruth Gordon/Garson Kanin.However if BBC show a documentary about the 1950’s apparently all women were forced to stay at home & do the cooking and cleaning by their husbands, no careers allowed.
Mary Harrington is a good writer. Intelligent & reflective. Other writers on ‘Women’s Issues’ , not so much — even on UnHerd, which is generally good
I think it’s fair to say that Julie Birchill and Mary Harrington write on subjects that go way beyond ‘women’s issues’.
I know right, what could be less worthy than than an assessment of how a woman shaped popular culture and a genre of entertainment that mostly women consume and unconsciously absorb ideas about love, agency and romance? Yawn.
Why can’t she write about the kinds of women men think important enough to read about at university?
I was going to say not entirely true, Mary Harrington writes about serious stuff. But then I remembered tat actually she and Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill ALL basically write about sex and women’s issues most of the time. You are right.
So in Unherd the men write badly about Palestine rocketing Israel and bloodshed and politics, and the women write well about ‘When Harry Met Sally’ hmmmm.
Sorry about that low shot… But I would really like articles on Simone Weil, or Gertrude Bell, even Joan Didon kind of figures. (and with Didon you get to squeeze in the Yeats line, and what is more fitting today?)
Good article: enjoyed watching her films very much, sleepless in Seattle being my favourite.