by Linda Hsu He should have called by now? Why hasn’t he? Oh maybe he’s just tied up. Maybe his dog’s died. Maybe he’s not in town. Maybe he lost my number, so maybe I should call him instead?! I think he likes me! Is he just playing hard-to-get? Why doesn’t he call? The truth is, maybe he hasn’t called simply because he’s NOT that into you; maybe all these signal takings is just a result of self-complication, so wake up, girl, he is just not that into you! He’s Just Not That into You, based on a self-improvement book written by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo and inspired by a line featured in a Sex and the City episode “Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little,” is a romantic comedy which claims to overthrow the cliché of chick flicks. Boasting a star-studded cast, including Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Connelly, Scarlett Johansson, this romantic comedy tells the stories of a group of interconnected people, who navigate in their relationships and try to be the exceptions in love. Single women who are desperate to find the right guy through numerous blind dates, a live-in couple arguing over whether or not having a real marriage, a married guy who lingers between his wife and mistress, and a guy who always ends up being a spare tire or rebound guy—He’s Just Not That into You is a montage of different kinds of relationships in love.
Constantly checking your cell every three minutes for missed calls and text messages, carrying your cell everywhere you go for fear of missing a call, making sure every possible way of reaching you is tuned, coming up with the most ridiculous excuses to explain why he hasn’t called—does any of these sound familiar? It is just what our protagonist in this film does—she is a girl who is constantly taking the wrong signals and convincing herself that the guy is very much into her. Despite claiming to overturn the clichés in chick flicks, He’s Just Not That into You still retains one code—women always get together to talk about guys. The difficulty in understanding between men and women has long been a popular topic in films and novels. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus—as the book title clearly suggests—portrays the two sexes as coming from different planets, which is what makes the understanding between them so difficult. From the age-old game of “petal-counting,” trying to guess the thoughts of someone you have a crush on, to the success of the TV series Sex and the City, which revolves around the discussion of men among four women, it’s not hard to see that themes exploring the erratic rules in understanding the opposite sex is prevailing. The film inevitably falls into the set pattern of a battle-of-the-sexes comedy. The theme is cliché: an epiphany finally awakens women to independence, and it is through this awareness that they finally find the right guy. Like your typical romantic comedy, the females are the ones hung up about relationships. A woman’s blindness when it comes to love is depicted as a universal phenomenon at the outset: whatever you are—Caucasian, Asian, African—it seems that when women gather around, all they care to talk about is men and how to decode men’s behavior, which I’m sure feminists won’t be so happy about. This kind of gender bias has a long history in chick flicks. Even some male friends of mine are starting to disagree about the behavior patterns in women: “It is men that always find excuses for themselves and guess what the girls are thinking.” Despite the efforts of trying to read the signs of the opposite sex and understand their behaviors using the established rules, the ending breaks these rules as the indifferent man, who awakens the self—-hypnotizing woman with detailed analysis of male psychology, ends up falling in love with her. Although the ending is meant to be inspiring and unexpected, this “rule-busting” principle is highly predictable. Perhaps sometimes these so called “rules” don’t work simply because love doesn’t always work under rules despite the logical analysis and because you just become the exception. Being a romantic comedy trying to break the self-hypnotizing “happily-ever-after” love story and misconception of “if a guy acts like a total jerk, that means he likes you,” the rather optimistic ending still conforms to romantic comedy patterns. After all, it was a movie released on Valentine’s Day, so what more can you expect? “Or maybe the happy ending is this, knowing after all the unreturned phone calls, broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment, you never gave up hope.” Though the movie doesn’t free itself from the gender stereotype and romance clichés, take a relaxed, self-mocking attitude while seeing this film, and you may be very entertained! 10 Chick-flick Clichés You Won’t Find in This Movie - No makeover montages. - No singing into random objects. - No quirky, sardonic or sassy best friend. - No scene where someone has a one-night stand, shows up to work the next day and discovers they’ve actually slept with their new boss. - No sliding down the wall while crying. - No laughing and crying at the same time. - No elderly folks who say inappropriate things. - No chasing someone down to stop them from going somewhere, to stop them from doing something (neither in the airport, train station, nor wedding). - No shots where heads fall into frame and land on pillows. - No speech where a guy tells a girl all the details he likes about her in order to win her over. - No falling-in-love montages. http://www.hesjustnotthatintoyoumovie.com/ a
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Authors
The Taida Student Journal has been active since 1995 with an ever-changing roster of student journalists at NTU. Click the above link to read about the authors Archives
May 2024
|